was in the inner office late one fall afternoon. Billy, my best friend and partner, was in the outer office working on his latest painting. The sign on our outer door read,
Cherokee Investigations
Donald Youngblood and Bill T. Feathers
Private Investigators
Billy and I didn’t start out as licensed private investigators. We were basically just hanging out. The whole thing started as a joke. Then we got our licenses and in the years that followed a lot of people began to take us seriously. I didn’t need the money but I did want to help people and bring some excitement into my dreary life. Becoming a private investigator seemed the perfect occupation to do just that. Besides, you can put anything you want to on an office door.
Billy, on the other hand, did need the money. His only other source of income was from his photography, painting, and drawing, where his reputation had far outdistanced his income. He had a small gallery where he sold underpriced original framed photos and his art. He also acted as a forensic photographer for a number of the smaller local police and sheriff’s departments in the east Tennessee area. He lived frugally and he invested well. I know because I handled his investments.
I was playing solitaire on my desktop computer when the door opened to the outer office and I heard voices. One voice was Billy’s. The other voice I did not recognize.
“Blood, you busy? Someone here to see you,” Billy’s voice rumbled back into my office. Billy did not have to talk loud to be heard. Billy had called me “Blood” since we became best friends in college. He says it is a spiritual thing. A few of my close friends have called me Blood since junior high school, but I didn’t tell Billy. Best for him to think that it was his idea.
What Billy brings to our partnership is a deep understanding of the human condition and an air of danger. Billy is a big person. He seems to be in touch with life on a different plane than I am. It gives us a nice balance and a strong and unique friendship. Billy Two-Feathers is a full-blooded Cherokee Indian. I call him “Chief.” I started that in college as a joke. It was not very original, but it stuck as sort of an inside joke. Billy finds the nickname rather amusing and teases me that it is racist, but I suspect he likes the bond that it creates between us. Only one other person calls Billy “Chief,” though others have tried.
“Send them in,” I answered as I shut down solitaire.
A tall, lean man entered my inner sanctum. I would guess six-foot-two. He had salt and pepper hair and steel gray eyes. Ruggedly handsome, a woman would say. He was dressed in an expensive suit and was maybe ten years older than me, but in really good shape.
“Mr. Joseph Fleet requests your presence as soon as possible at his residence,” the man said in a monotone. He wore a deadly serious expression. He stood waiting for a response from me as I stared at him. He seemed in no hurry.
“I’m supposed to bring you now,” he added, matter of factly.
I didn’t know Joseph Fleet but I certainly knew of him. If he wasn’t the richest man in Mountain Center he was at least in the top five.
“You have a name?” I asked the messenger.
“Roy Husky,” he said. Upon closer inspection Roy did not exactly look like a typical employee. More like a bodyguard. He was polished and spoke with some education but I guessed that underneath it all he was basically a thug.
“So, Roy, it’s take me or die trying?”
“Something like that,” he said, with a tight grin.
“Think you could?” I smiled.
Roy looked over his shoulder toward Billy in the outer office. “Probably not,” he said with a little larger smile. At least he was honest.
“You’re in luck. I’m not busy. Let’s go.”
I followed Roy out to a black limousine. He opened the back door and I got in. Once we were moving he lowered the privacy partition.
“You Fleet’s chauffeur?” I asked.
“Among other things,” he answered in a flat tone.
I didn’t want to know what the other things were and so I kept my mouth shut.
After a few minutes Roy broke the silence. “The other man at your office, American Indian?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“What tribe?”
“Cherokee.”
“Been inside?” asked Roy. He wanted to know if Billy had been in prison. Billy had. I guessed that Roy already knew the answer. He was just looking for confirmation.
“For him to say,” I answered, and paused. “You?”
“Yep,” he nodded, and the conversation was over.
The drive took a while. The Fleet Addition was an exclusive neighborhood on the extreme north side of town. The rumor was that when Joseph Fleet developed the subdivision and built his mansion there he pulled some political strings and had the Addition annexed so that his children could go to city schools. Fleet was supposedly a devout family man. Actually, he had only one child, a daughter, Sarah Ann. She was a few years behind me in high school and I had not really known her and had not seen her in years. Fleet’s wife died a few years back and he had not remarried, at least that I had heard.
As we drove I thought about Roy’s interest in Billy. I suspected that Roy recognized and respected power and danger when he saw it. Billy was an imposing figure. At six-foot-six he didn’t look so tall at first glance because his body was so perfectly proportioned. He did look immense.
Billy and I had met during our first basketball practice at the University of Connecticut. Billy was there on a basketball scholarship and trying desperately to get an education. I was there on an academic scholarship and trying desperately to forget about Marlene Long who had seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth. Since I was a pretty good high school player, I had decided to take my just over six-foot frame and walk on to the UConn basketball team. I hoped to win a guard position, but two weeks later I was told my services were no longer needed.
Billy and I sat next to each other in a freshman Geography class. Billy was very quiet. I think he was afraid of saying something stupid, so he said nothing. I rarely got more than a one-word response to anything I said to him. But I hung in there with him and one day after class he asked if I wanted to go someplace and get something to eat. I said yes and that was our start.
Billy gradually opened up. In fact, sometimes I could not shut him up. I don’t think he had anyone else to talk to. We became the dynamic duo, the basketball star and the playboy scholar. For countless hours I helped him study. He was brighter than he gave himself credit for, but he was deliberate and he was afraid of books. It took him a while to get things, but when he finally understood he didn’t forget. We both graduated in the spring of 1980, Billy with a degree in Art and I with degrees in Finance and Economics. We went our separate ways vowing to stay in touch.
I ended up on Wall Street. Billy made some bad decisions, kept some bad company, and ended up in prison. I visited Billy on a regular basis while he was in Danbury prison for the entire five years I worked in New York City. It took years for Billy
