Maid of the Mist (4 page)

Corrigan produced the dress from inside his coat. He'd half dried it on the car heater on the way over. 'Do you recognize this?' he asked. 'It belongs to one of your people.'

Lightfoot snorted. He barely glanced at it.
'My people.
You mean a slot technician?'

'You know what I mean. She's in some kind of trouble; problem is we can't communicate with her. She's talking . . . Native American.'

'Corrigan, I'm not into all that crap. You want to talk to someone, you go down to the basement, ask for Tarriha. Maybe he'll help you.'

'Tarriha. OK. Tarriha. What's that, an old Indian name?'

'Sure,' Lightfoot said, 'means Valet Parking.'

He found Tarriha in the underground parking bay, jumping from a Merc like a teenager, but his face looked old enough to have spat on Custer at the Little Big Horn.

'Lemme see,' he said when Corrigan told him about the dress. He took hold of it, pressed it against his nose and breathed in. Then he unfolded it and examined the beadwork and the embroidery.

'I'm trying to identify the girl who was wearing it.'

Tarriha's lip curled up. He handed the dress back. 'She dead?'

Corrigan shook his head. 'Can you tell me anything about it?'

Tarriha shrugged. 'Maybe.'

Corrigan took out his wallet and removed a twenty-dollar note. He folded it in half and flicked it back and forth across his fingers.

Tarriha's lip curled further, exposing yellow teeth. 'You insulting me? I am Tarriha, of the people of the hill, of the Tuscorora Iroquois. I earn more than that for parking one fucking Merc, and you're asking me to betray my nation.'

'I'm asking you about this dress. It's no big deal.'

'For twenty bucks you're damn right it's no big deal. Forty bucks and I'll tell you all about it.'

Corrigan gave him another twenty. He didn't mind. They had a fund for this sort of thing. The only problem would be asking for a receipt later. Tarriha crumpled the notes and pushed them into the back pocket of his casino uniform. 'Iroquois dress. You know Iroquois?'

'Sure,' Corrigan replied weakly.

'Iroquois League has six tribes. Mowhawk, Onondagas, Cayugas, Oneidas, the Senecas and Tuscororas. This is Tuscorora.'

'Made on a reservation?'

'Our reservation dresses come from Taiwan. We ain't made them like
this
for fucking ever. Hundred years, two hundred, more.'

'You speak, uh,
Tuscorora
?' Corrigan asked.

Tarriha's eyes narrowed ever so slightly. 'I might,' he said.

When the cab pulled up at Turner House, the whole building was in darkness.

'Ah,' said Tarriha, 'women's refuge. Figures.'

Security lights came on as they approached the front door. Corrigan rang the bell and after what seemed about three hours an eye appeared at a peephole. He shouted his name and said he needed to see Annie.

A couple of days after that, with Tarriha shifting his weight from one foot to another, a hand opening and closing in each of his uniform's trouser pockets as if he was trying to make space for an expected influx of cash, Annie unbolted the door. She was bleary-eyed; she wore a pink dressing gown that was too short in the sleeves, which made her look even taller. Behind her Corrigan could see two other women, each of them strategically placed – one by the telephone and one a little to the right of the door so that she had a clear view of Corrigan and Tarriha, and could shoot either or both of them dead with the shotgun she held confidently to her shoulder.

'I thought I told you to come back tomorrow,' Annie said, looking suspiciously at Tarriha.

'You told me to come back tonight if I was really interested in helping the refuge. And I am.'

'Uhuh.'

'C'mon, Annie. It's better to find out what's wrong now. Maybe she has a kid somewhere, did you think of that? Alone, afraid.'

'I can blow his fucking head off from here,' the shotgun woman growled.

Annie shook her head. She even managed a smile. 'OK,
Corrigan,
maybe you have a point. We'll wake her, your friend. . .'

'Tarriha,' said Corrigan, 'of the Tuscorora Iroquois . . .'

'. . . can have five minutes, at least to establish if she wants to talk, OK?'

She stepped back from the door. As they crossed the hall the shotgun remained trained on them. Tarriha growled,
'Five minutes,'
under his breath. They'd agreed $60 an hour for his translations, irrespective of how long they took. They had an even bigger fund for this kind of thing.

For the second time that night Corrigan was led up the stairs to the locked and barred room. This time Annie knocked softly on the door after unlocking it, then slowly opened it. She lay in the same position as before; her back was exposed; the nightie was draped over a chair.

Annie stepped into the room, followed by Corrigan and Tarriha, and for a few seconds all three of them gazed at the tranquil form lying half-naked on the bed.

Then Tarriha rammed his foot down on the wooden floor, barked like a dog and yelled something in what Corrigan presumed was Tuscorora.

Corrigan hurried up the steps into the station. He checked with the desk to see what was happening. There'd been a minor fracas at the casino – there was a convention of flower arrangers or something equally pointless in town that week and it was always the innocuous ones that were the most trouble, like they'd something to prove – and a couple of drunk drivers, but nothing of note, nothing to justify Stirling getting all mysterious.

'Where's Stirling?' Corrigan asked.

'Downstairs with a prisoner.'

'Anyone special?'

'Depends on your musical taste.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'I don't know, sir. Officer Stirling instructed me to say that if you asked. I have no idea who it is. Came in with a blanket over his head.'

'OK. All right.'

Corrigan got himself a coffee and went down to the cells. There was a chalkboard at the end of the corridor which showed that two of them were occupied. One by someone called Bernard Rawlins. The other by ?

?

A question mark in cell two.

A question mark, at the very least, over Mark Stirling's next promotion.

Corrigan shook his head and checked cell one. Black guy in a chauffeur's uniform sitting on the edge of the bed.

He opened the door. The guy stood up quickly. He looked scared.

'That's OK,' Corrigan said, 'sit down. You want a coffee?'

Rawlins shook his head.

'What've you done?' Corrigan asked.

Rawlins looked to the far wall, but meaning the other side. 'I done nothing.'

'Next door, huh?'

Rawlins nodded. He sat down, slowly. 'I done nothing,' he said again.

Corrigan pulled the door closed behind him. He peered through the next window. Or tried to. There was tape over the glass.
Fuck.
Corrigan banged on the door. After a few moments it opened a fraction and Stirling peered out. He was grinning.

'Mark. What the fuck are you playing at?'

Stirling peered behind him, then opened the door a fraction more and slipped out. He was that skinny. He pulled the door closed behind him and said: 'You'd never guess.'

'Mark, I don't intend to fucking guess. Just tell me.'

'No, guess.'

'Mark . . .'

'Go on, go on, go on . . . who do we have in there?'

Corrigan rolled his eyes. 'President Keneally. Harrison Ford. The Lindberg baby. How the fuck do I know?'

'Not even close. OK. Three-second clue.' Stirling pulled the door open. Corrigan looked in. Good-looking boy, tear-stained, white jumpsuit, long hair, shivering, nose bleeding, eyes bulging . . . door closed. 'Easy now?'

Corrigan shook his head. He took another sip of his coffee then set it down on the floor. 'Mark, just tell me who it is, before I put
you
in a fucking cell.'

'You really don't know?'

'I really don't know.'

Stirling looked incredulous. 'It's Pongo,' he said.

'Who the fuck is
Pongo?'

'You're serious?'

'I'm serious.'

'The singer.'

Corrigan shook his head. 'Sorry, lost me.'

'He's
huge.'
Stirling started to sing something, jutting his head forward at the same time, egging Corrigan on to remember it.

'Sorry. Although I hope he sings it better than that. OK, Mark, you've had your fun, now what is the singer Pongo doing in one of my cells, and why all the fucking mystery?'

It was a name given with a child's mix of venom and jest, a soubriquet spat from a split lip after a playground collision at an exclusive private boarding school nestling in the Green Mountains in Vermont.
Pongo.
Ali was thirteen and one of the few students of non-European extraction attending the school and therefore subject to more accidental collisions than most. He couldn't remember now the name of the boy who had delivered it: only the fact that it had mystified him.
Pongo.
He had thought at first that it was a reference to body odour, but dismissed that; if anything, he washed excessively. Soon everyone was calling him Pongo, even the Old Cripple. In fact it wasn't for another six months that he discovered Pongo was from
101 Dalmatians.
And another month after that to establish the connection: spots. His pus-puffed face was a testament to a losing battle with puberty and what were Dalmatians famous for but their spots? He had hated it for a long time, long after puberty had departed and left in its wake a near perfect complexion, and a boy blossomed into youth and not inconsiderable beauty.

He had never really understood what the Old Cripple did for a living, but one day a car came to the school and he was forced to pack his bags and depart with barely an hour's notice. His father was relocating to New York. It meant a change of friends, and a change of name. He was no longer Ali, he was someone else. There had been two or three names since. It was the nature of the Old Cripple's business and he had to accept it. The only thing of lasting value he brought with him from Vermont was Pongo.

A lonely teenager in New York turned to the only thing he had any love for: rock'n'roll. He taught himself guitar, began to compose songs. He bought a drum-machine, then a portastudio – the Old Cripple was, of course, extremely wealthy, despite, or possibly because of his sudden geographical shifts – and recorded a demo in his bedroom. He thought it was pretty cool. Sent it to Warner Brothers. A photo as well. They
hated
the demo, but loved the photo.

So out they came to the current mansion to take a good look at him. Then they closeted themselves away with his father, who knew how to drive a hard bargain. Within a month he was in a real recording studio, he had a producer, a team of songwriters, a stylist, a PR woman, a single, a video and a guest appearance in a top teenage soap opera.

It was the start of Pongo mania.

Twelve number-one singles, hit albums in every country in the Western world.

He sang of teenage love. He swivelled his exquisite hips. The music they chose for him was an odd hybrid of Motown and gangsta rap, with the gangsta removed. Music critics dismissed it as cop-rock: horns, soul and respect for the law. But it came at the right time. Gangster violence was not only tearing up the cities, but the farmlands as well. Music was harsh and tuneless and every second word was
Mothafucka.
This was sweet and wholesome and a mother would be proud to buy it for her children, and she wouldn't mind getting Pongo into bed either.

He was
huge.
For five years he was the number-one-selling recording artist in the United States. If he wore it, it was fashion, if he drank it, it was cool. He said no to drugs, safe sex wasn't even on the agenda. There was no sex at all. During his five years at the very pinnacle of the profession, teenage pregnancies fell by 15 per cent.

And then one day something dreadful happened.

He grew up.

Stirling had a big smile on his face now. He patted Corrigan's arm. 'Frank, Frank. Somedays, somedays the light just shines on you. There was me thinking, god damn this town's been quiet for too fucking long. You know how quiet it's been . . .'

'I know how quiet it's been.'

'Then, there I am driving back to base and there's a fucking accident beside the river. Coke lorry runs over a little girl, fifteen years old. Kills her. Squashes her.'

'That's nothing to laugh about, Mark.'

'No. Of course it isn't.' The smile hadn't slipped any. 'But the joke is, Frank, the fucking joke is – she fell out of Pongo's car. He was fucking her in the back seat and she fell out.'

'He tell you this?'

'No – he's too fucking out of it. His driver did.
He's
scared shitless. I check the car out, what do I find? A fucking pound of coke. A pound, Frank. Sitting there in a fucking cookie jar.'

'OK, Mark. Very good. I await the punchline.'

The grin slipped a little. 'OK, maybe it's not a joke. Maybe it's more like your black comedy. Frank, c'mon, a genuine pop star, the kids love him, their folks love him too, he's as clean as Santa Claus – and we can tie him into the death of a little girl and with enough coke to keep half of Toronto happy. They'll destroy him.'

'And that's your idea of a funny?'

'No, Frank, I'm not thinking of
him,
I'm thinking of
us.
The whole fucking world will descend on us. TV. Radio. Newspapers. One thing they like at headquarters is good publicity. We're talking promotion, big promotion. We're talking the front of
Police Review.
We're talking
celebrity.
The guys that nailed Pongo.'

'And that's why all the cloak and dagger?'

'That's why all the cloak and dagger. We control this, it'll be the making of us.'

'Mark?'

'What?'

'What about the girl?'

'Like I say, squashed.'

'Her name, Mark, her name. What about her parents?'

'Katharine. Katharine Stewart. She's in the morgue. I haven't contacted her parents yet, Frank. I wanted to run this past you first.'