CHAPTER 10
Manny stood when
Erica glided into the restaurant. Heads turned and people stared as
she picked her way gracefully through the tables. Her black hair
hung midback, straight and shiny, in a ponytail held by a beaded
dream catcher. Manny looked up to her as she strode toward him like
a model on a runway. Erica’s height had helped the Pine Ridge Lady
Thorpes to the state championship her senior year, and like her
mother, her height enhanced her exotic look. And as with Elizabeth,
more makeup would have distracted from her natural beauty, from the
light skin and lower cheekbones she inherited from
Reuben.
“Uncle Manny.” She
bent and hugged him tight. She pulled back and stared, and frowned
as she looked first at the bandage on his head, then at his
gauze-wrapped hand. “Mom said you’d been attacked, but she didn’t
say it was this bad. You look worse in person than you did on the
news last night.”
“Has everyone seen
that botched news conference?” He forced a smile over the pounding
in his stitches. “Anyway, it’s not as bad as it looks. But let me
look at you.” He held her at arm’s length and admired her. A year
had passed since he’d met Erica and Jon in D.C. for the Indian
Rights conference, and five years before that since he had given
her away in a small wedding near the Capitol. She’d changed so
little in that time.
“You look even fitter
since the last time, Uncle Manny. Still running?”
He nodded and
blushed, his cheeks warm. He knew when he was being politely lied
to. Even though he had embarked on his diet and exercise regime, he
had gained ten pounds since last year, and what little hair he had
left had grown grayer around his temples. Still, in her presence he
felt young again. “And you,” he said. “You never
change.”
She smoothed her
maroon linen sheath dress before sitting.
“No Jon
tonight?”
“He got tied up in
deposition, but he sends his best.”
“Ah, the bane of an
attorney.” Manny feigned regret.
Erica began to speak,
then dropped her eyes.
“Trouble?”
Erica nodded. “It’s
the resort project. It could ruin Jon.”
“How?”
She glanced around
their table and lowered her voice. “His law firm here in Rapid
City—and in particular Jon—handled the project. He vouched for
Jason, even when he couldn’t back up Jason’s big ideas with the
feasibility study the tribe required. Jon figured everything Jason
touched turned to gold, and trusted him implicitly.”
“But the Red Cloud
Corporation backed the project. Out West here, that’s better than
posting a bond.” He hadn’t believed it when Elizabeth told him
Jason was going under, and he found it difficult to believe it
coming from Erica.
“That’s another thing
that Jon covered for him,” she whispered. “The Oglala Sioux Tribe
waived a thirty-million-dollar bond on Jason’s reputation, and on
Jon’s and my assurance that the project would progress on schedule.
But with Jason dead, it’s not going to happen.”
“Why
not?”
“There’s no one to
run it.”
“Couldn’t someone
else in the corporation run the project? Surely the board will see
that it would still make a bundle for the corporation and the
tribe. From what I’ve heard of Jason’s ambitions, the project would
have been a slam dunk.”
The waitress brought
their tea and Manny asked for a little more time to order. He
dropped the sugar packs and used the Sweet’N Low as he waited for
Erica’s explanation. “There is no board. The corporation was a
corporation in name only. He took over after his parents died, and
he made all the decisions.”
“I understand there’s
Jason’s executive assistant, Clara Downing. Have you thought about
working with her? Proceeding with the project?”
Erica flushed. Her
lips quivered as she leaned closer to him. “Clara Downing is inept.
She’d be even more of a disaster than Jason.”
“Have you worked with
her before?”
She shook her head.
“I haven’t, but Mom has. She can’t stand Clara.”
“Why?”
Erica stopped and
studied her sweating water glass, running her finger over the
sides. “Well, I guess Mom just doesn’t trust her. There’s nothing
she can put her finger on. It’s just women’s intuition, Mom
says.”
“But you personally
have never seen Clara Downing’s work?”
Erica lowered her
eyes. “No. But I trust Mom’s judgment.”
“OK. But apart from
Clara Downing, Jason had all those projects. That Skylight Hotel in
Breckenridge. The Deer Lodge Ski Resort outside Billings. Surely he
must have—”
“He threw them up by
the seat of his pants. Believe me, I learned there was nothing
sound in anything Jason did in business. And I know business.”
Erica had landed a full ride to Harvard right out of high school,
one of the few Oglala Sioux to attend an Ivy League school, and
she’d made the most out of it. She had excelled in her business
administration major, and Jason hired her to help the Red Cloud
Resort project get off the ground. Erica put her heart and soul
into the project to make it a success, but now it wasn’t going to
happen.
The waitress hovered
over their table. Erica ordered a Cajun chicken salad, shaming
Manny into dropping his yearning for a fatty prime rib and ordering
a salad, too. When the waitress left, Manny leaned closer. “The
bottom line then: How solvent was Jason?”
Erica shook her head.
Her hair shimmered in the light of the votive candle on the table.
“Clara Downing might tell you more. Jason wasn’t solvent at all. He
squandered what money he had left these past few years, and made
some bad investments. Then there was the failed high-rise in Aurora
that nearly wiped him out, until he could come up with something
else to build. But the worst thing is he put the tribe’s money in
trust, just like I suggested to the tribal council, except Jason
controlled the trust. It will look like I was in on it with
him.”
“What trust money?”
Manny whispered.
“Nearly all the money
the tribe had in its coffers. We—that is, I—convinced the council
that the Red Cloud Corporation would match the tribe’s money dollar
for dollar. The more they invested, the larger and more successful
the project would be.”
“The crucial question
is when did you realize that Jason planned to take the tribe’s
money and run?” The timing involved could be the difference between
a poor choice of business partners and a prison sentence for fraud.
“When did you find out he intended ripping off the
tribe?”
Erica wiped tea from
her lip and paused before answering. Manny thought the pause a
little more than necessary, as if she needed time to concoct a
story, but maybe he allowed his agent’s suspicion to get in the way
of an uncle’s good judgment. His niece was an honest person, but
with Jason dead, she would shoulder the brunt of any fraud
allegations.
“It was about two
weeks ago. I thought Jason had hired me because I had such a good
consulting track record. I was actually patting myself on the back
until I figured out that he didn’t hire me because of my Harvard
degree. He hired me because I was from Pine Ridge, like that would
make a difference to the tribe.”
Erica’s voice
quivered and tears formed at the corners of her eyes. He wanted to
hug her as he did when she was a child, wanted to tell her
everything would work out. But she was right about the reasons
Jason hired her: Her Harvard degree would impress tribal council
members, and they would trust one of their own even more. The
Oglala had a history of being stomped on and taken advantage of by
outsiders, and they would have been wary of anyone other than
another Oglala endorsing the project. People knew Erica had
overcome tremendous setbacks to get ahead, and knew she’d grown up
under the burden of her father doing time in the state pen for the
Two Moons murder. She would later become a star basketballer and
excel academically, only to be rejected from every top college
despite her athletic and scholastic accomplishments. When she
unexpectedly landed a scholarship to Harvard, people on the
reservation cheered her on. People would remember all these things
about his niece and trust her judgment. But right now, that
judgment had tarnished her reputation, and it might ruin her
career.
The waitress brought
their salads, and Manny cut a slice off the hot mini-loaf of garlic
bread resting on a wooden board. He passed it to Erica, then cut
another slice as he steeled himself for his next round of
questions.
“I need to know
something. There was rumor around that you and Jason were having an
affair.”
“An affair with
Jason! He’s as old as—”
“Your own father.
That’s not uncommon today.”
“No. I wasn’t having
an affair with him. The man made my skin crawl. How could anyone
even think that we were involved?”
“You and Jason spent
a lot of time together on the project after he came to stay on Pine
Ridge.”
“Once he moved into
the tribe’s house, I spent nearly every day with him. Except for a
couple days he was gone, and that business trip to Minneapolis for
a weekend, we spent every day together. A project of this size
takes a lot of work, and we couldn’t afford to be slackers, even
for a day. But an affair? No way.”
Manny selected the
raspberry vinaigrette from the three small cruets the waitress had
brought. He read the label and put a little on his finger before
replacing the cap. He grabbed the ranch dressing: too many calories
and too much fat. He returned that bottle and went back to the
raspberry, trickling some over his salad. Perhaps Erica was being
truthful and knew nothing about Jason’s scheme to bilk the tribe of
their money. Still, there was the argument Henry Lone Wolf
overheard.
“Someone overheard
you and Jason arguing a week before he was murdered.”
Erica took the
dressing from Manny, and matched his look while she dribbled
dressing on her own greens. “I found out Jason intended stealing
the tribe’s money. He said he was going to invest it in a winter
resort project in Jackson Hole, said that would keep his head above
water long enough for him to make good on the Pine Ridge
resort.”
“Witnesses say you
threatened to tell Jon it was over. That sounds like you were going
to come clean on an affair.”
Now Erica laughed,
either out of nervousness or relief, Manny couldn’t tell. “I
threatened to tell Jon that Jason intended to embezzle the tribe’s
money. I told Jason I would work up the case myself and take it to
the U.S. Attorney for prosecution. When he heard that, he
exploded—that damned temper of his. He grabbed me. Violently. I
never saw him that mad before. He was always so …”
“Charming? That’s how
most people who didn’t know him well described their meeting with
Jason. Except he was about as charming as a
carbuncle.”
“Exactly!” she said.
She put her fork down midbite and leaned closer. “He was charming.
So much that it surprised me when he grabbed me. It frightened the
wits out of me. He looked capable of killing anyone who got in his
way, and I was in his way. So when he finally let me go, I told him
I would give him the chance to do the right thing. I told him to go
through with the project, that he didn’t have to steal the tribe’s
money. He promised me he would, and we planned on the ground
breaking the day he was killed.”
Manny was sorry he
had to ask her those painful but necessary questions. “Jason’s
‘charm’ sold the tribe on the project. The last one you should
blame is yourself. You were so committed, you knew the project just
had to succeed.”
Erica looked up from
her salad and straightened in her seat. “I suppose you’re right,
but it doesn’t make it any less painful. That’s my home, my people
he was about to sell out. And I was part of it.”
“It was his home,
too, long ago,” Manny reminded her. “Did you tell anyone else about
the embezzlement?”
“Just Mom. I tell her
everything. And she’s the tribe’s finance officer; she needed to
know what was coming down. She needed to stay on top of things in
case any tribal members needed updates. Besides, she heard Jason
and I had a huge argument and asked about it.”
Manny nodded. He was
content to spend the next hour in the company of his niece,
charming in her own right. They discussed the state of the Pine
Ridge and Rosebud reservations in the wake of the recent tribal
court shake-ups. They talked about the positive things developing
there since she’d returned to the area. They talked about the local
economy, how the tribe was attracting new businesses, and how
Russell Means might change that if he were elected tribal
president. They talked about all these things, but one thing Erica
never once asked about was Reuben and how he was doing. Perhaps she
had finally forgotten her father.
Why was Manny
fighting the urge to ask Erica how she was able to put her past,
her pain, her father behind her and get on with her life, even
coming back to the reservation? Maybe her answer would help him
bury his past, but she had enough troubles of her own right now.
So, he ate and enjoyed the company of his niece for the rest of the
evening.