Tohono O'odham With Love

"I remember, one time she met us close to Christmas and gave us presents while Stern played slots in the Casino," Soto recalls. "She gave Marshall an Indian play doll, with a teepee and a horse. That was okay. But then she gave me an old Cher CD. Remember that one from the '70s, Half-Breed? She said it was one of her favorite songs, and could I play it for Marshall. I kept thinking, 'How dumb is this woman?' She also tried to get me to fuck her again, in the Casino restroom while Marshall played with his toy. By this time she was so fat, she could barely fit in the stall. Ultimately, I couldn't go through with it. She kept saying she wanted me to use my 'bow and arrow' on her 'ax wound.' I told her that was no ax wound, it was the Grand Canyon! She got so pissed, she almost left in a huff, but then came back when she realized she hadn't hugged Marshall goodbye."

By all accounts, Marshall adored his famous mom; he kept a picture of her on his chest of drawers and always kissed it goodnight before Johnny turned off the little boy's lamp. Every time Anna Nicole appeared on TV, the stripling would cry out, "Mommy je'e!" But as Smith's career took an upswing with her weight loss and the TrimSpa spokesmodel deal, Soto and his son saw her less and less. As phone and bank records demonstrate, Smith continued to call and send the wire transfers. Also, Smith remembered birthdays and holidays, having a gleaming electric blue, child-size mountain bike delivered to the Soto household for Christmas of '06.

"The last time she called in January, she didn't sound right," Soto recalls. "I knew she was again back on the drugs. Her speech was slurred, and she was saying crazy stuff about how there were rats under her bed trying to eat her feet, and that the Mafia was out to kill her for her money. Before I heard the news, I got a letter in the mail from her, written in lipstick, with a photo of her shaving Howard K. Stern's butt. I thought maybe she needed to be institutionalized. Obviously, the birth of Dannielynn and Daniel's overdose — it was just too much for her."

So when Smith shuffled off her diamond-studded coil on February 8, Soto was devastated, but far from shocked. He'd felt something bad coming, and had even discussed it with his medicine man, but he had no idea it would be death. He tried to reach Howard K. Stern, but was rebuffed by handlers and hangers-on. The wire transfers soon ceased. Soto was met with unsettling silence and impersonal phone machine messages whenever he attempted to reach someone, anyone. He and the boy had savings, but he was afraid to burn it all up on a trip to the Bahamas. A sitting Tohono O'odham supreme court judge attempted to assist (he asked that his name not be used, as private practice is forbidden for those on the court) but got nowhere. Soto says he needs a high-profile lawyer to take the case and fight for Marshall's rights, someone like Wyoming attorney Gerry Spence or former O.J. Simpson attorneys F. Lee Bailey, Robert Shapiro, or Barry Scheck.

"Do you know how to get hold of [former Arizona attorney general and now trial lawyer] Grant Woods?" he asks, after Marshall had cried himself to sleep following a wrenching day of watching his mom's funeral. "We're not greedy, but Marshall's older than Dannielynn, and I want him to have what's rightfully his. That's one reason I decided to go public. I didn't know where else to turn. Right now the tribe is helping me, and if we win, I'll make sure they get half of whatever Marshall inherits. I want him to grow up on the reservation, to learn our language and what we call the O'odham 'himdag', the O'odham way of life. But we can't do it by ourselves. This is the white man's law, and we need someone who knows the white man's law to help."

Whatever member of the bar takes his case, one thing is sure: Should Soto's boy obtain his inheritance from his dead mother, carving a chunk off the gazillions that languish in the estate of J. Howard Marshall, the Tohono O'odham Nation — now beset with the ravages of drug trafficking, poverty, and diabetes — would overnight become the richest Indian nation in the southwestern United States. These "people of the desert," as Tohono O'odham translates, once known as the Papago, or "bean eaters," might become the children of paradise, their rugged land possibly transformed into a Sonoran El Dorado.

And all because Anna Nicole Smith had an itch only tribesman Johnny Soto could scratch back in 2001.