Underground

“I have three nines and I’m ru

Located on Cherry in a basement row of little lunch spots that mostly catered to local office workers, Bakeman’s was determinedly blue collar in service and atmosphere. The odor of roast turkey and meatloaf wafted out the sunken door along with the clang and shout of the staff passing orders and moving customers at New York speeds. The hard, slick walls and Formica tables reflected the noises of the busy kitchen and the hurried diners into a rattling cacophony. No one lingered over a cup of joe at Bakeman’s or “took meetings” at the no-nonsense tables without risking the owners notorious sharp tongue. If Fern Laguire or her mismatched muscles wanted to snoop, they’d have to come in, order up, and join us at our table to have any hope of eavesdropping or getting in without drawing attention.

I’d barely sat down with my food when Quinton popped in through the lunchrooms back door from the building above.

“Hey,” he said, sliding in next to me to facilitate a lower-volume conversation.

“Hey. Two things first. We’re going to Marysville to talk to Fish’s grandmother about the Sistu, which should take a few hours so you better grab some food if you’re hungry. And I got a visit from the NSA about thirty minutes ago.”

Quinton looked thoughtful. “I’ll be right back.”

He returned in ten minutes with one of Bakeman’s famous sandwiches and a can of soda. “I always think I’ll have the pie next time and I never do,” he said.

I finished my soup and glanced at him as he wolfed his food. I was glad he hadn’t run, though I hadn’t really expected him to. “You know anything about this Fern Laguire?”

He nodded and swallowed. “I hear she was heartless at twenty and had passed ‘ballbreaker’ in her thirties. Ten years ago she’d advanced to vitrified in all human emotions except anger. The scale appears to be logarithmic.”

“She has two assistants who smell of Fed, one probably CIA, the other local Feeb.”

Quinton nodded acknowledgment.

“Do we have a problem?” I asked.

“There’s a hole in something. I don’t want to discuss it right now. In fact, considering communication is the name of the game with them, probably best to get moving and talk as little as possible. Fern may not have you bugged yet—if she just hit town she hasn’t had much time.”

“Unless she came on a private flight, I’d guess she couldn’t have arrived before eight-thirty this morning—assuming flights landed on time with the snow.”

He hummed, thinking. Then he asked, “Do you need your cell phone for this trip?”

“I need to call Fish for directions to his place.”

“Use a pay phone—it’s safer. I’ll have to disable the cell—otherwise they may use it to track or bug us.” He put out one hand for my phone and picked up his soda with the other, draining it in three big gulps.

I handed him the phone, which he looked over and put on the table.

“Remove the battery, will you?” he asked, rummaging in his coat.

As I pried the battery out, Quinton pulled a big folding knife from his pocket.

I started to snatch my phone back, but he stabbed the side of the soda can near the upper crimp and cut the top off. Then he wiped the remaining soda out of the can with a napkin and dropped my phone in before squeezing the can into a flatter shape and folding the ragged edges down, making a sort of tight metallic envelope. He handed me the phone and the battery, and the tiny spark that seemed to pass between us when his fingers brushed mine had nothing to do with the phone. “Hold on to these, but keep them apart and don’t put them back together until we’re back in Seattle—unless you have to. I want to check the Rover before we go. Call Fish and I’ll meet you at the parking garage.”

Quinton folded the paper over his remaining half sandwich and stuffed it into one pocket of his coat and the knife into another pocket.

Then he left through the door he’d come in by. I figured that Laguire was probably still waiting for me at the Cherry Street door, if she was watching, so I used a pay phone across the street to call Fish, buying Quinton time to get to my truck unseen—I hoped—while I got the directions.

Quinton was lurking in a dark corner of the garage and slipped into the Rover’s backseat when I unlocked it. He gave me a thin smile. “No sign of spooks or bugs.”

We picked up Fish and headed for the Tulalip reservation west of Marysville.

Fish told us about his grandmother as I drove and Quinton sat in the back, scowling at his own thoughts.

“We’re going to see Ella Graham. Now, she’s not actually my grandmother,” Fish explained. “We call her Grandma as a term of respect because she’s old and wise—and kind of scary. I’m not sure how old she actually is, but my mom says she’s about a hundred and I wouldn’t be surprised if that were true. She’s also… crotchety, I guess is the word, so you have to cater to her a little. Pretty old-school. If she had her way, she’d live in a long house with her whole family and smoke salmon over the fire. But she knows all the stories and legends and she’s got a good memory for stuff she saw or heard when she was younger. She said she’d talk to you, but she wanted a gift.” He held up the large goldwrapped box he’d had on his lap all this time. “My mom tipped me she’s a sucker for chocolate, so I got some Fran’s.”

“Give me the receipt and I’ll reimburse you,” I said.

Fish chuckled. “Heck no. I want to see how she eats them—they’re caramels. We’ll have to stop at the casino and get some cigars for her, if you want her really happy.”

“Cigars? You’re kidding.”

“Nope. She doesn’t smoke ‘em. She just likes to smell ‘em burning—says they smell like the old days. If we get lucky, Russell will have some Cubans he got from his cousin in Whistler and let us have one or two.”

I shook my head. “Cuban cigars and handmade chocolates. Not exactly the combo one expects to bring when visiting elderly ladies.”

“Not just any old lady—Grandma Ella. It won’t seem so strange when you meet her.”

I shrugged. “If you say so. Who’s Russell?”

“Russell Willet. He’s a buddy of mine from, hm… preschool, I guess. We ate mud together. He decided to work for the tribe. He’s a good manager, but he gets bored when things go well for too long, so he keeps changing jobs. At the moment, he’s working in the casino, but he’s always got contacts in everything.”

“Willet, Graham… I know one of the bigwigs in the tribal council is named McCoy. How come you ended up with the stereotyped name?”

“That’s my mom for you,” Fish replied, shrugging. “I think she was mad at me for giving her so much trouble in the womb. She didn’t even give me a name for three years—some Indians wait to name their kids until they do something of merit or ‘find’ a name themselves. It’s not a very common practice, but it’s still around. Mom just called me ‘dirty boy’ for a while—‘cause I was really good at getting filthy and tracking it all over everything. My original birth certificate just says ‘boy, Williams.’ ”

“You could have changed it,” I suggested.

“Nah. It was a little rough when I was a kid, but now I kinda like being Reuben Fishkiller. ‘Reuben Williams’ would have been boring.”

I was a little confused. “But you call yourself Fish, not Fish-killer.”

“Not all the time,” Fish said. “Most of the kids I grew up with have a totem name of some kind—an Indian name we earned—but we don’t usually use them outside the tribe. It takes some explaining and… well… it sounds kind of pretentious on most people. I mean, you’d look fu