Talking God jlajc-9

by Tony Hillerman

  “Your troubles? You mean that blue-eyed little schoolteacher? I thought she’d kissed you off and moved back to Milwaukee or someplace. Is she still your trouble?”

  “Mary Landon,” Chee said.

  “That sure has dragged along,” Dashee said. “Is she back out here again?”

  “She did move back to Wisconsin,” Chee said, thinking he really didn’t much want to talk about this. “But we write. Next week, I’m going back there to see her.”

  “Well,” Dashee said. The breeze had shifted now and was moving out of the north, even colder than it had been. Dashee turned up his coat collar. “None of my business, I guess. It’s your funeral.”

  The screen of blankets had been dropped over the doorway of the patient’s hogan now and all the curing activities were going on in privacy. The bonfires that lined the cleared dance ground burned high. Spectators huddled around them, keeping warm, gossiping, renewing friendships. There was laughter as a piñon log collapsed and the resulting explosion of sparks routed a cluster of teenagers. Mr. Yellow had built a kitchen shelter behind the hogan, using sawed telephone poles as roof posts, two-by-fours and particle board for its walls. Through its doorway, Chee could see dozens of Mrs. Tsosie’s Bitter Water clansmen drinking coffee and helping themselves from stacks of fry bread and a steaming iron pot of mutton stew. Highhawk had drifted that way too, with Bad Hands trailing behind. Chee and Dashee followed Highhawk into the kitchen shelter, keeping him in sight. They sampled the stew and found it only fair.

  Then the curtain drew back and the hataalii backed out through it. He walked down the dance ground to the yei hogan. A moment later he made the return trip, walking slowly, chanting. Old Woman Tsosie emerged from the medicine hogan. She was bundled in a blanket, her hair bound in the traditional fashion. She stood on another blanket spread on the packed earth and held out her hands toward the east. The kitchen shelter emptied as diners became spectators. The socializing at the bonfires quieted. Then Chee heard the characteristic call of Talking God.

  “Huu tu tu. Huu tu tu. Huu tu tu. Huu tu tu.”

  Talking God led a row of masked yei, moving slowly with the intricate, mincing, dragging step of the spirit dancers. The sound of the crowd died away. Chee could hear the tinkle of the bells on the dancers’ legs, hear the yei singing in sounds no human could understand. The row of stiff eagle feathers atop Talking God's white mask riffled in the gusty breeze. Dust whipped around the naked legs of the dancers, moving their kilts. Chee glanced at Henry Highhawk, curious about his reaction. He noticed the man with the crippled hands had moved up beside Highhawk.

  Highhawk's lips were moving, his expression reverent. He seemed to be singing. Chee edged closer. Highhawk was seeing nothing but Talking God dancing slowly toward them. “He stirs. He stirs,” Highhawk was singing. “He stirs. He stirs. Now in old age wandering, he stirs.” The words were translated from the ceremony called the Shaking of the Masks. That ritual had been held four days earlier in this ceremonial, awakening the spirits which lived in the masks from their cosmic dreams. This white man must be an anthropologist, or a scholar of some sort, to have found a translation.

  Talking God and his retinue were close now and Highhawk was no longer singing. He held something in his right hand. Something metallic. A tape recorder. Hataalii rarely gave permission for taping. Chee wondered what he should do. This would be a terrible time to create a disturbance. He decided to let it ride. He hadn’t been sent here to enforce ceremonial rules, and he was in no mood to be a policeman.

  The hooting call of the Yeibichai projected Chee’s imagination back into the myth that this ceremony reenacted. It was the tale of a crippled boy and his compact with the gods. This was how it might have been in those mythic times, Chee thought. The firelight, the hypnotic sound of the bells and pot drum, the shadows of the dancers moving rhythmically against the pink sandstone of the mesa walls behind the hogan.

  Now there was a new smell in the air, mixing with the perfume of the burning piñon and dust. It was the smell of dampness, of impending snow. And as he noticed it, a flurry of tiny snowflakes appeared between him and the fire, and as quickly disappeared. He glanced at Henry Highhawk to see how the grave robber was taking this.

  Highhawk was gone. So was Bad Hands.

  Chee looked for Cowboy Dashee. But where was Cowboy when you needed him? Never in sight. There he was. Talking to a young woman bundled in a down jacket. Grinning like an ape. Chee jostled his way through the crowd. He grabbed Dashee’s elbow.

  “Come on,” he said. “I lost him.”

  Deputy Sheriff Dashee was instantly all business.

  “I’ll check Highhawk’s car,” he said. And ran.

  Chee ran for Bad Hands’ car. The two men were standing beside it, talking.

  No more waiting, Chee thought. He could see Dashee approaching.

  “Mr. Highhawk,” Chee said. “Mr. Henry Highhawk?”

  The two men turned. “Yes,” Highhawk said. Bad Hands stared, his lower lip clenched nervously between his teeth.

  Chee displayed his identification.

  “I’m Officer Chee, Navajo Tribal Police. We have a warrant for your arrest and I’m taking you into custody.”

  “What for?” Highhawk said.

  “Flight across state lines to avoid prosecution,” Chee said. He sensed Dashee at his elbow.

  “You have the right to remain silent,” Chee began. “You have the right to—”

  “It’s for digging up those skeletons, isn’t it?” Highhawk said. “It’s okay to dig up Indian bones and put ’em on display. But you dig up white bones and it’s a felony.”

  “—can and will be used against you in a court of law,” Chee concluded.

  “I heard the law was looking for me,” Highhawk said. “But I wasn’t sure exactly why. Is it for sending those skeletons through the mail? I didn’t do that. I sent them by Federal Express.”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” Chee said. “All I know is you’re Henry Highhawk and I got a warrant here to arrest you on. As far as I know you shot eighteen people in Albuquerque, robbed the bank, hijacked airplanes, lied to your probation officer, committed treason. They don’t tell us a damned thing.”

  “What do you do to him?” Bad Hands asked. “Where do you take him?”

  “Who are you?” Dashee asked.

  “We take him down to Holbrook,” Chee said, “and then we turn him over to the sheriff’s office and they hold him for the federals on the fugitive warrant, and then he goes back to somewhere or other. Wherever he did whatever he did. Then he goes on trial.”

  “Who are you?” Dashee repeated.

  “My name is Gomez,” Bad Hands said. “Rudolfo Gomez.”

  Cowboy nodded.

  “I’m Jim Chee,” Chee said. He held out his hand.

  Bad Hands looked at it. Then at Chee.

  “Pardon the glove, please,” he said. “I had an accident.”

  As he shook it, Chee felt through the thin black leather an index finger and, perhaps, part of the second finger. All else inside the glove felt stiff and false.

  That was the right hand. If his memory was correct, the right hand was Bad Hands’ better hand.

  Chapter Five

  « ^ »

  Leroy Fleck enjoyed having his shoes shined. They were Florsheims—by his standards expensive shoes—and they deserved care. But the principal reason he had them shined each morning at the little stand down the street from his apartment was professional. Fleck, who was often after other people, felt a need to know if anyone was after him. Sitting perched these few minutes on the Captain’s shoeshine throne gave him a perfect opportunity to rememorize the street. Each morning except Sunday Fleck examined every vehicle parked along the shady block his apartment house occupied. He compared what he saw with what he remembered from previous days, and weeks, and months of similar studies.

  Still, he enjoyed the shine. The Captain had gradually grown on him as a person. Fleck no longer thou
ght of him as a nigger, and not even as one of Them. The Captain had gradually become—become what? Somebody who knew him? Whatever it was, Fleck found himself looking forward to his shoeshine.

  This morning, though, Fleck had other things on his mind. Things to do. A decision to make. He examined the street through habit. The cars were familiar. So was the bakery truck making its delivery to the coffee shop. The old man limping down the sidewalk had limped there before. The skinny woman was another regular walking her familiar dog. Only the white Corvette convertible parked beside the Texaco station down the street and the dark green Ford sedan immediately across from the entrance to the apartments were strangers. The Corvette was not the sort of car that interested Fleck. The Ford he would check and remember. It was one of those nondescript models that cops liked to use.

  Fleck glanced down at the top of the head of the shoeshine man. The hair was a thick mass of tight gray curls. Darky hair, Fleck thought. “How you doing there, Captain?”

  “About got ’em.”

  “You notice that green Ford yonder? Across the street there? You know who belongs to that?”

  The man glanced up, found the Ford, examined it. Once his face had been a shiny, coffee black. Age had grayed it, broken it into a wilderness of lines. “I don’t know it,” the Captain said. “Never noticed it before.”

  “I’ll get a check on the license number down at headquarters,” Fleck said. “You tell me if you see it around here again.”

  “Sure,” the Captain said. He whipped his shine cloth across the tip of Fleck’s right shoe. Snapped it. Stood up and stepped back. “Done,” he said.

  Fleck handed him a ten-dollar bill. The Captain folded it into his shirt pocket.

  “See if you can get a look at who gets into it,” Fleck said.

  “Your man, maybe?” the Captain said, his expression somewhere between skeptical and sardonic. “You think it’s that dope dealer you been after?”

  “Maybe,” Fleck said.

  He walked the five blocks down to the telephone booth he was using today, thinking about that expression on the Captain’s face, and about Mama, and about what he was going to tell The Client. The Captain’s expression made it clear that he didn’t really believe Fleck was an undercover cop. The old man had seemed convinced enough last summer when Fleck had first taken this job and moved into the apartment. He’d shown the Captain his District of Columbia police detective credentials the third morning he had his shoes shined. The man had seemed properly impressed then. But weeks ago—how many weeks Fleck couldn’t quite decide—Fleck’s subconscious began registering some peculiarities. Now he was pretty sure the old man didn’t believe Fleck was a cop. But he was also fairly sure the Captain didn’t give a damn. The old man was playing lookout partly because he enjoyed the game and partly because of the money. The Captain was a neutral. He didn’t give a damn whether Fleck was part of the law, or outside it, or the Man from Mars.

  At that point, Fleck had even considered talking to the Captain about Mama. He was a nigger, but he was old and he knew a lot about people. Maybe he’d have some ideas. But talking about Mama was complicated. And painful. He didn’t know what to do about her. What could he do? She hadn’t been happy out there at Bluewater Home outside Cleveland, and she wasn’t happy at this place he’d put her when he came to D.C.—Eldercare Manor. Maybe she wouldn’t be happy anywhere. But that wasn’t the point right now. The point was Eldercare wanted to be shut of her. And right away.

  “We just simply can’t put up with it,” the Fat Man had told him. “Simply cannot tolerate it. We have to think of our other clients. Look after their welfare. We can’t have that woman harassing them.“

  “Doing what?” Fleck had asked. But he knew what Mama was doing. Mama was getting even.

  “Well,” the Fat Man had said, trying to think how to put it. “Well, yesterday she put out her hand and tripped Mrs. Oliver. She fell right on the floor. Might have broken her bones.” The Fat Man’s hands twisted together at the thought, anxiously. “Old bones break easily, you know. Especially old ladies’.”

  “Mrs. Oliver has done something to Mama,” Fleck said. “I can tell you that right now for dead certain.” But he knew he was wasting his breath when he said it.

  “No,” Fat Man said. “Mrs. Oliver is a most gentle person.”

  “She did something,” Fleck had insisted.

  “Well,” Fat Man said. “Well, I hadn’t meant to say anything about this because old people do funny things and this isn’t serious and it’s easy to deal with. But your mother steals the silverware at the table. Puts the knives and forks and such things up her sleeve, and in her robe, and slips them into her room.” Fat Man smiled a depreciatory smile to tell Fleck this wasn’t serious. “Somebody collects them and brings them back when she’s asleep, so it doesn’t matter. But Mrs. Oliver doesn’t know that. She tells us about it. Maybe that was it.”

  “Mama don’t steal,” Fleck had said, thinking that would be it all right. Mama must have heard the old woman telling on her. She would never tolerate anybody snitching on her, or on anybody in the family. Snitching was not to be tolerated. That was something you needed to get even for.

  “Mrs. Oliver fell down just yesterday,” Fleck had said. “You called me before then.”

  “Well,” Fat Man said. “That was extra. I told you on the phone about her pulling out Mr. Riccobeni’s hair?”

  “She never did no such thing,” Fleck had said, wearily, wondering what Mr. Riccobeni had done to warrant such retribution, wondering if pulling out the old man’s hair would be enough to satisfy Mama’s instinct for evening the score.

  But there was no use remembering all that now. Now he had to think of what he could do with Mama, because the Fat Man had been stubborn about it. Get Mama out of there by the end of next week or he would lock her out on the porch. The Fat Man had meant it, and he had gotten that much time out of the son of a bitch only by doing a little very quiet, very mean talking. The kind of talk where you don’t say a lot, and you don’t say it loud, but the other fellow knows he’s about to get his balls cut off.

  With the phone booth in view ahead, Fleck slowed his brisk walk to a stroll, inspecting everything. He glanced at his watch. A little early, which was the way he liked it. The booth was outside a neighborhood movie theater. There was a single car in the lot, an old Chevy which Fleck had noticed before and presumed was owned by the morning cleanup man. Nothing unusual on the street, either. Fleck went into the booth, felt under the stand, found nothing more sinister than dried chewing gum wads. He checked the telephone itself. Then he sat and waited. He was thinking he would just have to be realistic about Mama. There was simply no way he could keep her with him. He’d have to just give up on that idea. He’d tried it and tried it, and each time Mama had gotten even with somebody or other, things had gone to hell, and he’d had to move her. The last time, the police had come before he’d gotten her out, and if he hadn’t skipped they probably would have committed her.

  The phone rang. Fleck picked it up.

  “This is me,” he said, and gave The Client his code name. He felt silly doing it—like kids playing with their Little Orphan Annie code rings.

  “Stone,” the voice said. It was an accented voice which to Fleck’s ear didn’t match an American name like Stone. A Spanish accent. “What do you have for me today?”

  “Nothing much,” Fleck said. “You gotta remember, there’s one of me and seven of them.” He paused, chuckled. “I should say six now.”

  “We’re interested in more than just six,” the voice said. “We’re interested in who they’re dealing with. You understand that?”

  Fleck didn’t like the tone of voice. It was arrogant. The tone of a man used to giving orders to underlings. Mama would call The Client one of Them.

  “Well,” Fleck said. “I’m doing the best I can, just being one man and all. I haven’t seen nothing interesting though. Not that I know of.”

  “You’re gettin
g a lot of money, you know. That’s not just to pay for excuses.”

  “When we get right down to it,” Fleck said, “you’re owing me some money. There was just two thousand in that package Monday. You owed me another ten.”

  “The ten is if the job was done right,” The Client said. “We don’t know that yet.”

  “What the hell you mean? It’s been almost a month and not a word about anything in the papers.” Fleck was usually very good at keeping his emotion out of his voice. It was one of the skills he prided himself in, one of the tricks he’d learned in the recreation yards of detention centers and jails and, finally, at Joliet. But now you could hear the anger. “I need that money. And I’m going to get it.”

  “You will get it when we decide nothing went wrong with that job,” The Client said. “Now shut up about it. I want to talk to you about Santero. We still don’t know where he went when he left the District. That worries us.”

  And so the man who called himself Stone talked about Santero and Fleck half listened, his mouth stiff and set with his anger. Stone outlined a plan. Fleck told him the number of the pay phone where he would be next Tuesday, blurting it out because he had some things to say to this arrogant son of a bitch. Some rules to lay down, and some understanding that Fleck was nobody’s nigger.

  “So that’ll be the number and now I want you to listen—” Fleck began, but he heard the line disconnect. He stared at the phone. “You son of a bitch,” he said. “You dirty son of a bitch.” His voice squeaked with the anger. The rage. This was what Mama had told them about. Him and Delmar. About the ruling class. The way they put you down if you let them. Treated you like niggers. Like dogs. And the only way you kept your head up, the only way to keep from being a bum and a wino, was by getting even. Always keeping things even. Always keeping your pride.

  He walked back toward his apartment thinking about how he would go about it. Lot of work to be done. They knew who he was, he’d bet a million dollars on that. The shyster pretended otherwise. Elkins pretended that what he called “protective insulation” worked both ways. But lawyers lied. Lawyers were part of Them. Leroy Fleck would be expendable, something to be thrown to the police when he wasn’t useful. Safer for everybody to have Fleck dead, or back in lockup. But The Client was where the money came from, so The Client would know everything he wanted to know.