"Your what?"

"Just play along," Jack said, and strolled toward Russell, pulling a pen out of his pocket along with his small spiral detective notebook. He waited for a hole in both the conversation and the swirling entourage, then stepped neatly through both.

"Mr. Ibanazi? Clark Lane, with 213 Magazine. This is one of the nicest events we've been to in months." 213 was the first area code assigned to Beverly Hills and was also the name of a slick magazine that featured its rich and famous.

Russell Ibanazi's head snapped up like he'd just been hooked with a twenty-pound test line.

"213?" the Chief grinned. "You guys thinkin' about doing a story on me?"

"Maybe… maybe… could be… could be," Jack mused. "This is our society editor, Lois Kent."

"Hi," Susan smiled, seductively.

From that point Russ Ibanazi was hooked like a Baja game fish. He shook Jack's hand energetically. He smiled at Susan longingly.

"I just started my own record label. That's why we're having the party. To promote Miracle Records." He exuded charm.

"Watch out for the critics on that one," Jack warned. "They're sarcastic bastards. You don't wanta give them an easy shot."

Russell's face scrunched up into a confused frown.

Jack spread his hands. " 'If it's a good song, it's a Miracle.' Easy slam. See the problem?"

Ibanazi's face fell. "I never thought of that. I see your point. We just went in business. Maybe I should come up with something else?"

"I love this record angle, Clark," Susan enthused. "I think we could be talking cover."

"Maybe… maybe… could be… could be. If you can get Mimi to go for it."

Russell smiled broadly, trying to close them. "We just finished our first week in the studio. Next week we do slap backs. My songs mostly. I compose my own stuff."

"This record producer thing is definitely our angle," Susan gushed.

They had him. Just reel the boy in, Jack thought. So he looked skeptical and sang the chorus. "Maybe… maybe… could be… could be."

Russell steered them away from the cabana and his guests, heading toward his house. Jack guessed he wanted privacy so he could nail down the cover without interruptions.

Chief Ibanazi led them through a patio door into his study, then locked it behind him.

"When my songs come-my inspiration-I always work in here. Once I'm in the zone my shit slams." He opened a wall cabinet and produced a sound system and a keyboard.

"I see some wide shots in here, Clark," Susan enthused, framing the room with her hands. "All this equipment… Russell at the piano." She was really getting into it.

"It's not a piano, Lois, it's a Yamaha Sound Machine," Russell corrected her. "I design sounds by sampling everything from automobile horns to bagpipes."

"Mimi's gonna flip, Clark. This could be perfect for the cover story on the 'L.A. Sounds' edition," Susan said.

"Maybe… maybe… could be… could be."

Russell was drooling. The cover of the "L.A. Sounds" edition. Does it get any better than that?

"Look, Russell…" Jack started.

"I go by Izzy." Off their puzzled looks, "Short for Ibanazi."

"Right. Very cool," Jack continued. "So Izzy, if we're going for the 'Sounds' cover, Mimi is gonna demand all her usual cover profile and background stuff. She's a stickler for facts. If we bring this to Mimi we gotta really sell it. A take-no-prisoners approach always works best with her. You with me?"

"Right. Of course."

"So I'm gonna need the whole soufflé-why you're living in Beverly Hills and not out on the res. I need the old mystic music from the native soul rap. See where I'm heading, Lois?"

"It's fantastic," Susan said.

Izzy's face actually fell. "Do we really need all that? The reservation stuff, I mean. It's so… Dances With Wolves."

"Oh no, Izzy, you misunderstand," Susan jumped in. "It's not for the magazine. We don't want the reservation material in the body of the story. 213, as you know, is very high-profile. A Beverly Hills society magazine. But Mimi absolutely demands full backgrounds on all cover subjects."

They watched his handsome face scrunch up again, like a squirrel trying to crack a walnut. The last thing Izzy wanted was a 213 cover shot of him with a peace pipe sitting in front of a rusting trailer on an Indian blanket. He saw himself in an Armani jacket and Gucci shoes, maybe some cool leather pants.

" 'Course, if you'd rather not…" Jack stood and put his pen away.

Izzy actually lunged across the desk and caught Jack's arm. "No, no. It's okay. No problem. If it's just for Mimi, what's it gonna hurt?"

"Exactly," Jack nodded. He had his spiral pad and pen back out in a flash, and licked the end of the ballpoint for effect, leaving a little streak of ink on his tongue. "You're the current chief of the Ten-Eyck tribe?" Jack asked.

"Yes. Ibanazis have been chiefs going back two hundred years."

"Mimi'll probably want to know exactly where the reservation is located," Susan prompted.

"It's way out past Indio," Russell said, and now he was wrinkling his nose, as if he could almost smell it all the way from Bel Air. "But it's nothing," he added quickly, "just seventeen hundred acres of old truck tires, cactus, and jackrabbits. It's worthless land."

"I see. Okay," Jack looked at Susan, then back at Izzy. "If it's so poor, how do you afford all this?"

"Oh… now I see where you're heading."

Jack was glad Izzy got it, because he wasn't sure he did.

"I lease the reservation out," Izzy continued. "I mean, the tribe leases it to the federal government."

"You do?" Jack looked at Susan, who smiled.

"Yeah. It's a great deal, too," Izzy went on. "Each month the government pays us about two thousand dollars an acre on seventeen hundred acres. There're only thirty-two members in our tribe, so once we cut it up, the annual take comes to over a million dollars apiece. My end, for instance, covers the payments on this place, living expenses, and my monthly recording studio fees. In return, we had to vote in a non-Indian administrator that the government chose for us. He just deals with the day-to-day running of the reservation. We moved out. Now most of us live around here or on the far West Side."

"Who's the administrator?" Jack asked, guessing it was Paul Nichols's brother or cousin.

"Scott Nichols," Izzy replied, confirming Jack's suspicion. "But, like I told you, it's just a pile of rocks and gopher holes. Seventeen hundred acres of nothing. Your magazine wouldn't care about it. Dingy, y'know… few old buildings an' shit."

"Right… right." Jack sounded disappointed. He made a few notes and furrowed his brow theatrically, like this story was about to get up off his notebook, stagger around the room, then fall over dead with a spike through its heart.

"Something wrong?" Izzy leaned forward anxiously.

"Well… I just…" He let it hang there.

"What? You just what?" Izzy was actually wringing his hands now.

"Well, I was wondering why the federal government would pay the Ten-Eyck tribe almost forty million a year for seventeen hundred acres of cactus and gopher holes. Doesn't seem to make sense."

"Oh," Izzy actually sighed in relief. "I can tell you that. That's easy: EPA standards."

"EPA standards?" Susan and Jack did that one together. Pretty good harmony, too. Maybe Izzy would give them a recording contract.

"Yeah. See, Indian land isn't subject to the same state and federal laws that the rest of the country is. Each tribe in the U.S. is like an independent nation, and we can make our own laws. The federal government has big toxic waste dumping problems for both nuclear and chemical gook. They don't have enough EPA-sanctioned sites to handle it all, so they started renting a few remote reservations where they could dump it cheap, without all the EPA hassles. It's a good deal for them and for us. Right after we signed the lease they started to dig a huge waste pit. Started even before we left. A hole to pump all that toxic shit into. On the res there's no EPA inspection, so the feds don't have to worry about tests to check for pollution of the groundwater. Nothing. As long as the Tribal Council votes an okay, then it's done."