Jackpot (Nameless Dectective)

by Bill Pronzini

  As I came down to the shoreline I could see the buildings of Sutcliffe along the west shore—but that first impression of strangeness lingered in my mind. There was something prehistoric about this whole area, as if in some elemental way it had been untouched by the passage of time and the rise of civilization, like the mountaintop in Lost Horizon. I would not have been very surprised to see a Tyrannosaurus rex pop up from behind one of the low brown hills.

  At the bottom of the downslope, 445 joined another road that ran both ways along the rim of the lake. I turned left, toward Sutcliffe. It seemed even warmer here than on the drive out; the thin, dry desert wind blowing in through the open window smelled of sage and held the promise of a blazing summer. The sky looked more white than blue, not with clouds but with a milky sun-glare, like an alkali flat turned upside down.

  The village was small, maybe a hundred buildings clustered on flatland extending back from the water’s edge. Most of the buildings looked to be private housing, with an air of newness about them that was enhanced by several big satellite TV dishes. On the near side was a public boat-launching facility and fishing access. I passed a structure that housed the Pyramid Lake Tribal Enterprises, dispenser of fishing licenses; then there was a road leading down into the village proper—an oasis of trees, a small trailer park, a public campground. And a weathered, clapboard building with a roof sign—DENHAM’s—and a lot of small signs plastered across its face: Slots. Pool. Video Arcade. Groceries. Liquor. Fishing Tackle and Marine Supplies.

  I parked and went into the store. The interior was cut into two halves: the left half a saloon with dance floor, the advertised pool tables and video arcade, and a short bar at which two Indians were deep in conversation with an Anglo bartender; the right half, beyond a wall covered with photos of fishermen and their catches, contained the groceries and marine supplies. The only person in the grocery half was a gaunt, gray-haired woman behind the checkout counter. Not an Indian, unless she was of lightly mixed blood.

  I got a can of Diet Coke out of the cold case and took it to the counter. The woman said, “That be all?” as she rang up the sale.

  “Except for some information.” I paid her for the Coke. “I’m looking for a young woman named Janine Wovoka. Do you know her?”

  I expected the woman to ask why and I was ready to trot out the missing-daughter ploy one more time. But she was the bored and talkative kind, without much curiosity; the kind who likes to hear the sound of her own voice. She said in tones of wry spread with relish, “I know her. But she don’t live on the reservation anymore, nor ever likely to again.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “When she left here she left for good. Her words, not mine. A rebel, that’s Janine. Nothing tame about that girl.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “How you think I mean?”

  “I’m not very good at guessing.”

  “Life in the fast lane. Hundred miles an hour.”

  “Why did she leave? Specifically, I mean.”

  “Couldn’t stand it here, she said. Whole world out there and she wanted to see some of it. But that wasn’t the real reason.”

  “No? What was?”

  “She wants to be white,” the woman said.

  I had no comment on that.

  “It’s a fact,” the woman said. “Hates being an Indian, wishes she’d been born white like you and me. If you know her, you know that’s the way she is.”

  “Her folks still live here?”

  “Her father does. John Wovoka. Mother’s dead.”

  “Can you tell me where John Wovoka lives?”

  “Trailer just south of Pelican Point. Might be there now, might not. Wednesday’s one of his days off—he works for the government, fish and game commission. Goes fishing, mostly, on his days off.”

  “How do I find his trailer?”

  “Can’t miss it,” she said. “Silver thing, green trim, on the lake side of the road. Nothing much around it. If he’s not there, try Popcorn Rock.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “South shore. How’d you come in? Sparks road?”

  “Yes.”

  “Take the other fork, the one says ‘Nixon.’ Which wasn’t named after the president, we got more sense than that,” she said, and laughed. Local joke.

  “That’s where John Wovoka goes fishing?”

  “That’s where. Caught a fifteen-pound cutthroat trout off that rock a few years back. Won’t go anywhere else since.”

  I thanked her and went out to my car. But I didn’t leave right away; I sat long enough to slake my thirst with the Diet Coke.

  She wants to be white.

  Well, that told me some things about Janine Wovoka. Not the desire to be white, if that was her desire. The fact that she wanted something different and better for herself, and getting it had been an uphill battle all the way because of white people like that woman in there.

  Chapter 14

  JOHN WOVOKA’S TRAILER, silver with green shutters and a green skirt, rested on a flat-topped hump of land equidistant between the road and the lake and at least a quarter of a mile from its nearest neighbor. A rutted lane led to it across rocky ground that was more or less level. Behind the trailer, beyond a small shedlike building, the terrain dropped off sharply to the water’s edge and an empty dock not much larger than a platform on stilts.

  I turned off onto the lane. Parked near the trailer was a beat-up, olive-drab pickup, and when I drew in next to it I saw that the driver’s door wore an official seal and the words U.S. Fish and Wildlife Commission. I beeped the horn before I got out, but nobody appeared in the trailer’s doorway. The place looked and felt deserted.

  Quiet here, the kind of stillness that is so complete, you can hear the beat of your heart. Out on the lake, the only boats I could see sat motionless like cardboard cutouts. The lake itself was clean, free of algae. No eutrophication here. There weren’t enough trees or vegetation and hardly any development. But that wasn’t the only reason. The Paiutes were poor, and the poor don’t create major havoc with the environment; that seems to be the right and privilege of the wealthy and ruling classes. Money and power not only corrupt, they pollute, too.

  I knocked on the trailer door. No answer. There was a window in one side of it, uncurtained, but it was above the level of my vision even when I stood on tiptoe. I considered hunting up something to stand on, decided that sort of prying was uncalled-for, and moved around to the rear. The shed was just about big enough to house a small boat; alongside it was a boat trailer and an accumulation of things that looked like junk but were so tidily arranged that each may have been gathered for a specific purpose. There was no other vehicle, no indication of anyone’s presence other than John Wovoka’s.

  I returned to my car and drove back to the main road and down past Sutcliffe to the south-shore junction. A sign on the left fork said that it was thirteen miles to Nixon and twenty-nine miles to Wadsworth. I went that way, following the southern curve of the lake.

  Popcorn Rock was easy enough to spot, even without the sign that identified it; it looked exactly like a huge brown-stone replica of a popcorn kernel. Beyond it was a rutted track that took me down to an equally rutted, rocky parking area and a narrow dirt-and-sand beach. Two cars were parked there, each one with an attached boat trailer. They were both empty and so was the beach.

  I found a place to park where I could turn around without damaging shocks, springs, axles, or tires on the rough ground. Nearby was a big sign that said WARNING and told you Pyramid Lake could be dangerous to boaters in high desert winds and that small craft should not be operated when whitecap conditions prevailed. I walked past that and down to the water’s edge. There weren’t any fishermen in boats lying off this section of shoreline, and I was thinking that maybe John Wovoka had decided to do something else today when I spied the boat and the man upshore in the shadow of Popcorn Rock.

  The boat was drawn up on the beach and the man was sitting motionless in a c
left of the rock; at this distance I couldn’t tell if he was asleep or just watching the lake.

  I moved that way, following the shoreline. The boat was a twelve-foot outboard runabout at least twenty years old and in good repair; a homemade canvas sun awning shaded its deck. I didn’t get a good look at the man until I was within a few paces of him. He was my age, or maybe a few years younger—a man big and lean at the same time, all hard edges and flat planes, with a weathered face so heavily and sharply creased, it reminded me of an adobe brick left too long to cure in the sun. Longish black hair and high cheekbones and the dark bronze color of his skin identified him as an Indian, and when I got closer I thought I detected a resemblance between him and the photographic image of Janine Wovoka. He wore khaki trousers and a faded blue chambray shirt and a San Francisco Giants baseball cap.

  He was awake, maybe watching the lake, maybe lost in thought. He paid no attention to me, did not even seem to notice my approach, until I neared him and stopped and asked, “Are you John Wovoka?” Then he looked at me, slowly, without surprise or particular interest. His face was expressionless.

  “Yes,” he said. And after he’d studied me for a few seconds, “I don’t know you.”

  “We’ve never met.”

  “How’d you know where to find me?”

  “The woman at Denham’s.”

  “Her. Mrs. Denham. She talks too much.”

  “I thought so too.”

  “What is it you want?”

  “To ask you some questions. About your daughter.”

  “Janine?” Now his face and eyes showed animation, and an emotion I took to be pain. “What about her? Something happen to her?”

  “No,” I said, “it’s nothing like that.”

  “She’s my only child,” he said.

  “Can you tell me where she is?”

  “No,” he said. He frowned slightly, so that the facial creases looked even sharper, deeper. “Why? Who’re you?”

  I did not lie to him; you don’t tell an elaborate lie about a missing daughter to a man whose own daughter may be missing. I gave him my right name, and said that I was a private investigator from San Francisco, and offered to let him look at my ID.

  He shook his head. “Why are you looking for Janine?”

  “I think she knows something about the case I’m working on.”

  “What case?”

  “A young man in San Francisco committed suicide two weeks ago. His sister hired me to find out what drove him to it. Janine knew him.”

  “What young man?”

  “David Burnett.”

  He shook his head again, to indicate that the name meant nothing to him.

  “Burnett and Jerry Polhemus were buddies,” I said. “Do you know Polhemus?”

  There was a silence before he said, “Janine’s ... friend.”

  “You’ve met him?”

  “You don’t have to meet his kind to know them.”

  “What kind is that, Mr. Wovoka?”

  “John,” he said.

  “Pardon?”

  “I prefer John. I don’t like to be reminded of the false prophet.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t ...”

  “Wovoka was a Paiute messiah,” he said. “Disciple of Wodziwob the visionary. I’m descended from him.”

  I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t say anything.

  His gaze was on the lake again. “You ever hear of the Ghost Dance? Hundred years ago?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Wodziwob had a vision. Big train was supposed to bring back our dead ancestors, heralded by some kind of natural disaster, and when that happened all the whites would be destroyed and Indians would own the land again. What would make these miracles happen, he said, was ceremonial dancing around a pole —the Ghost Dance—and singing magic songs he’d learned in his vision. His disciple had visions, too, even grander ones. So when Wodziwob grew weak with age, it was Wovoka who led the ghost cult, spread its message. The Paiutes danced and other tribes danced along with them—the Cheyenne, the Arapaho, the Sioux. Sitting Bull danced and made war against the whites. He and his braves wore ghost shirts, supposed to protect them in battle, but they were massacred anyway. At Wounded Knee in 1890.” He paused and his lips moved in what might have been a brief, bitter smile. “Wodziwob and the other false prophet were fools,” he said. “There is no magic. There aren’t any miracles.”

  I wondered if he was trying to tell me something, or if he was being deliberately obscure, or if this was some sort of outpouring of cultural self-pity. I said, “I don’t think I understand.”

  “There’s nothing to understand.” He stirred himself, got slowly to his feet. He was taller than he’d seemed sitting down, six-two or -three. “Don’t mind me. I like to tell stories.”

  “We were talking about Jerry Polhemus,” I said.

  “A man-child who takes and gives nothing in return.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Janine should have better than him. A better man, red or white. I told her so but she wouldn’t listen. She hasn’t listened to me since she was a little girl.”

  “When did you last see her, John?”

  His only answer to that was a shrug.

  I said, “Was she with Jerry Polhemus then?”

  Another shrug.

  “Where did you see her? In Reno?”

  “She won’t come out here anymore,” he said. “She hates it here, her birthplace. She doesn’t see the beauty—her eyes have gone blind.”

  “Where was it in Reno that you—”

  I broke off because he was moving away from me, toward where the boat was tied to an outcrop. He stopped before he got to it, and pointed lakeward and said without turning, “You see the islands there? The big one, Anaho, has been a national wildlife refuge since 1913. More than seven thousand pelicans nest there every summer. Other species, too—gulls and cormorants, Caspian terns, blue herons.” I came up beside him and he said then, “Janine never saw them, even when she was young and her eyes were clear.”

  “Can you give me any idea where to find her, John?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Any friends she might have confided in or gone to stay with?”

  “I don’t know her friends. I don’t want to.”

  “She lived with Alice Cardeen for a while, on Eastshore Drive in Reno. Do you know her?”

  “I’ve spoken to her on the phone. She has no respect for me.”

  “Why not?”

  No response.

  “Janine moved out when she lost her job at the Coliseum Club, two weeks ago. Were you aware of that?”

  “Yes. Alice Cardeen told me that much.”

  “Do you know why she lost her job?”

  “No.”

  “I think it has to do with a lot of money David Burnett got his hands on a little over three weeks ago,” I said. “The money is the root cause of his suicide and I think Janine knows where he got it.”

  “How much money?”

  “Two hundred thousand dollars. He said he won it gambling —a big slot-machine payoff. But he didn’t. I have an idea it was Mob money.”

  He stared at me. “The Mafia?”

  “Organized crime, yes.”

  “Janine and those people?”

  “No. Not the way you mean.”

  “But Burnett was mixed up with them?”

  “In some way.”

  “Polhemus?”

  “I’m not so sure about him. He’s missing too, now. Something may have happened to him.”

  Silence for a time; he was digesting what I’d told him. Then he said, “Is Janine in danger?”

  “No,” I said. “Not from the Mob, at least. If something did happen to Polhemus, it isn’t likely they were responsible.”

  More silence, not quite as long this time. “You intend to keep looking for her?”

  “Until I find her.”

  “Let me know when you do. She won’t call, she doesn’t want anyt
hing to do with me anymore, but I’m her father. You understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “Then let me know. That she’s all right, if nothing else. Will you do that?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He nodded, said, “My number is listed,” and then turned and untied his boat and pushed it out into the lake and swung his big lean body aboard. He started the engine, backed and turned into deeper water, then sent the craft skimming away to the north.

  Strange man, John Wovoka. And a strange conversation I’d had with him, on the shore of this strange lake. But then, if I had been born an Indian, a stranger in my own land, I would likely be pretty odd myself. His daughter may not have had an easy time of it, but he had lived more than twice as long and so his time of it must have been more than twice as difficult.

  There is no magic. There aren’t any miracles.

  His meaning didn’t seem so obscure after all.

  Chapter 15

  THEY WERE WAITING FOR ME when I got back to the motel.

  Two of them, in a white Cadillac limousine with smoke-tinted windows. The limo was parked three slots down from my unit, but because of the smoky glass I couldn’t see them sitting inside and so I didn’t pay much attention to the car. I parked in front of my unit, went to the door. I had just keyed it open when I heard them behind me, but they were so slick and professional that I did not even have time to turn. One of them caught my arm and together they crowded me inside. The other one flipped the light switch, then shut the door to close us in.

  When the one let go of my arm I moved ahead a couple of steps, over next to the bed, to keep a distance between us and so I could get a better look at them when I turned. Young, beefy, casually dressed; cut from the same blank-faced mold as the pair at Ekhern Manufacturing, only bigger. Ex-football players, maybe—guys with no necks. Both brown-haired, brown-eyed, the only appreciable difference between them being that one wore a mustache and the other was clean-shaven. They weren’t showing guns; may not even have been armed, though I couldn’t tell for sure from the cut of their jackets. But that didn’t mean anything one way or another. They were here; that was what meant something.