Talking God jlajc-9

by Tony Hillerman

  Kennedy sighed, shook his head. “You get the check,” he said. “I’ll get somebody to check on the luggage in Washington.”

  He did. Leaphorn got the call Tuesday.

  “Here’s what they found,” Kennedy said. “The reservation was made in the name of Hilario Madrid-Peña. Apparently it was a bogus name. At least both the address and the telephone number were phony and the name isn’t in any of the directories.”

  “That puts us back to square one,” Leaphorn said, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice. “Unless they found something in the luggage.”

  “Just a second,” Kennedy said. “ ‘One large suitcase and one briefcase,’ ” he read.“ ‘Suitcase contained the expected articles of underwear, shirts, socks, one pair trousers, ceramic pottery, toilet articles. Briefcase contained magazines and newspapers in Spanish, books, small notebook, stationery, envelopes, stamps, fountain pen, package Tums, incidentals. Nothing in notebook appeared helpful in establishing identity.’ ” Kennedy paused. “That’s it. That’s all she wrote.”

  Leaphorn thought about it. “Well,” he said, “I don’t know what to think.”

  “I’m waiting for you to say ’Thank you, Mr. Kennedy,’” Kennedy said.

  “Do you know the agent who checked?” Leaphorn asked.

  “You mean personally? Or what was his name? No to both. It could have been anybody.”

  “You think it would have been somebody who knew what he was doing?”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” Kennedy said. “Some rookie you’d want to get out of the office. A deal like this one wouldn’t be high priority.” Kennedy laughed. “Neither am I.”

  “What’s the chance of getting the Bureau to run down the train crew, find out who picked up the luggage, cleaned up the roomette, that sort of thing?”

  “I don’t know. Probably about the same as you pitching the opening game of the World Series next year.”

  “I’m told that train crew works out of Washington.”

  “So what?” Kennedy said. “Before they put a man on something like that, they have to have a reason.”

  “I guess so,” Leaphorn said. He was thinking that he knew a man in Washington who might do it for him. Out of friendship. If Leaphorn was willing to impose on the friendship. He said, “Well, thank you Mr. Kennedy,” and hung up, still thinking about it. P. J. Rodney would do it out of friendship, but it would be a lot of work for him—or at least it might be. And maybe Rodney was retired by now. Leaphorn tried to remember what year it had been when Rodney left the Duluth Police Department and signed on at Washington. He must have enough years in to qualify for retirement, but when Leaphorn had written Rodney to tell him about Emma, he had still been on the District of Columbia force.

  Leaphorn glanced at his watch. Time for the news. He walked into the living room, turned on the television, flicked it to channel seven, turned off the sound to avoid the hysterical screaming of the Frontier Ford commercial, then turned it up to hear the newscast. Nothing much interesting seemed to be happening and he found his thoughts returning to Rodney. A good man. They had become friends when they were both country-cousin outsiders attending the FBI Academy. One of those all-too-rare cases when you know almost at first glance that you’re going to like someone, and the liking is mutual. And when Rodney had stopped off at Window Rock to visit them on his way to California, he’d had the same effect on Emma. “You make good friends,” Emma had told him.

  Rodney was a good friend. Leaphorn watched Howard Morgan warning about a winter storm moving across southern Utah toward northeastern Arizona and New Mexico. “Watch out for blowing snow,” Morgan said.

  Leaphorn thought it would be good to see Rodney again. He knew what he would do with his vacation time.

  Chapter Nine

  « ^ »

  Janet Pete met him at the Continental gate at National Airport, looking trim, efficient, tense, and happy to see him. She hugged him and shepherded him through the mob to the taxi stands.

  “Wow,” Chee said. “Is it always this crowded?”

  “Anthill East,” Janet said. She’s tired, he thought. But pretty. And very sophisticated. The suit she wore was pale gray and might have been made out of silk. Whatever it was made of it reminded Chee that Janet Pete had a very nice shape. It also reminded him that his town jeans, leather jacket, and bolo tie did not put him in the mainstream of fashion in Washington, D.C., as they did in Farmington or Flagstaff. Here every male above the age of puberty wore a dark three-piece suit, a white shirt, and a dark tie. To Chee, the suits seemed to be identical

  His eyes shifted back to Janet, studying her. “Nobody ever looks at anyone,” Chee said, who had been caught by Janet staring at her. “You notice that?”

  “Avoid eye contact,” Janet said. “That’s the first rule of survival in an urban society. I hear it’s even worse in Tokyo and Hong Kong and places like that. And for the same reason. Too damn many people crowded together.” She gave the driver the address of Chee’s hotel. “It was nice of you to come,” she said, and her tone told Chee she meant it.

  It was a gray, chilly, drizzling day, a “female rain” in Chee’s Navajo vocabulary. Janet asked about the reservation, about tribal politics, about their very few mutual acquaintances. Chee answered, wondering now why he had come, wondering if he should have gone to Wisconsin despite Mary’s letter. He’d told the travel agency at Farmington to get him a hotel in the “moderate to economical” range. The one where the cab stopped looked economical at best. He checked in. The price was seventy-six dollars per day—approximately triple a good room in the Four Corners country. This room was tiny, with a small double bed, a single chair, a TV set mounted on a wall bracket with one of the control knobs missing, a single narrow window looking out at the windows of a building across the street. Chee motioned Janet to the chair and sat on the bed.

  “Here I am,” Chee said. “What can I do?”

  Janet made a wry face. “The trouble is I don’t know what’s going on. Or even if anything is going on.”

  “You said someone was following you. Tell me about that.”

  “That doesn’t take long,” Janet said. “The first time I went to see Henry Highhawk, I couldn’t find his place at first. I walked right past it, and then back again. There was a car parked up the block a ways with a man sitting in it. He was staring at me, so I noticed him. Medium to small apparently. Maybe forty-five or so. Red hair, a lot of freckles, sort of a red face.” She paused and glanced at Chee with an attempt at a smile. “Do you ever wonder why they call us redskins?” she asked.

  “Go on,” Chee said. “I’m interested.”

  “Highhawk lives out on Capitol Hill, in a neighborhood they call Eastern Market. It’s easy to get there on the Metro. That’s the subway. So I took the Metro and walked to his house. About seven or eight blocks, maybe. I happened to walk past this guy twice sitting in his parked car, so I noticed him. Then when—”

  “Hold it,” Chee said. “You mean he’d moved the car after you passed him the first time? He moved it up ahead of you?”

  “Apparently. And then, when I left Highhawk’s place, he was still there. Still sitting in that car. Again, I noticed him twice more while I was walking back to the subway. He was walking the second time. Like he wanted to know where I was going and he left his car parked and followed me on foot. But he didn’t get on the subway. Or if he did, I didn’t see him.”

  She paused, looked at him for reaction.

  “Hmm,” Chee said, trying to sound thoughtful. He was thinking there were plenty of non-sinister reasons a man might follow Janet Pete.

  “Since then, three or four times, I’ve seen him,” she added.

  Chee apparently didn’t looked sufficiently impressed by this. Janet flushed.

  “This isn’t Shiprock,” she said. “You don’t just keep seeing a stranger in Washington. Not unless you work in the same place. Or eat in the same place. Millions of people. But I saw this man outside the buildin
g where we have our law offices. Once in the parking lot and once outside the lobby. And not counting the Eastern Market Metro business, I saw him out at the Museum of Natural History. Too much to be a coincidence.”

  “The very first time was at Highhawk’s place.“ Chee said. “Is that right? And again out in his neighborhood. Maybe he’s interested in Highhawk. And you’re Highhawk’s lawyer. Maybe he’s interested in you because of that.”

  “Yes,” Janet said. “I thought of that. That’s probably it.”

  “I’d offer you some refreshments if I had any,” Chee said. “In Farmington, in a seventy-five-dollar hotel, if they had anything that expensive, you’d have a little refrigerator with all those snacks and drinks in it. Or you’d have room service.”

  “In Washington that comes in the three-hundred-dollar-per-day hotels,” Janet said. “But I don’t want anything. I want to know what you think of Highhawk. What do you think of all of this?”

  “He struck me as slightly bent,” Chee said. “Big, good-looking belagaana, but he wants to be a Navajo. Or that’s the impression I got. And I guess he dug up those bones he’s accused of digging up to be a militant Indian.”

  Janet Pete looked at him, thoughtfully. “Do you know anything that connects him with the Tano Pueblo?”

  “Tano? No. Really, I know damned little. I just got stuck with the job of taking the federal warrant and going out to the Yeibichai and arresting the guy. They don’t tell you a damn thing. If they don’t give you the ‘armed and dangerous’ speech, then you presume he’s not armed or dangerous. Just pick him up, take him in, let the federals handle the rest of it. It was a fugitive warrant. You know, flight to avoid. But I heard he was wanted sdmewhere East for desecrating a graveyard, vandalism. So forth.“

  Janet sat with her lower lip caught between her teeth, looking troubled.

  “Jim,” she said, “I think I’m being used.”

  “Oh?”

  “Maybe it’s just I’m the token Navajo and Highhawk wanted a Navajo lawyer. That would make sense. Washington is lousy with lawyers but not with Navajo lawyers.”

  “Guess not.”

  “But I’ve got a feeling,” she added. She shook her head, got up, tried to pace. The room was, by Chee’s quick estimate, about nine feet wide and sixteen feet long, with floor space deleted for a bathroom and a closet. Pacing was not just impractical, it was impossible. Janet sat down again. “This Highhawk, he’s a publicity hound. Oh, that’s not really fair. Just say he knows how to make his point with the press and he knows the press is important to him and the press loves him. So when he waived extradition and came back here, he said he wanted a Navajo lawyer and that made the Post.” She paused, glanced at Chee. “You know me,” she said.

  Chee had known her on the reservation as a lawyer on the staff of the Dinebeiina Nahiilna be Agaditahe, which translated loosely into English as “People Who Talk Fast and Help the People Out” but was more often called the DMA or Tribal Legal Aid, and which had earned a hard-nosed reputation for defending the underdog. In fact, Chee had gotten to know her when she nailed him for trying to keep one of her clients locked up in the San Juan County jail longer than Janet thought was legal or necessary.

  “Knowing you, I bet you volunteered,” Chee said.

  “Well, I called him,” she said. “And we talked. But I didn’t make any commitments. I thought the firm wouldn’t like it.”

  “Let’s see,” Chee said. “It’s Dalman, MacArthur, Fenix, and White, isn’t it? Or something like that. They sound like they’d be a little too dignified to be representing somebody who vandalizes graveyards.”

  “Dalman, MacArthur, White, and Hertzog,” Janet said. “And yes, it’s a dignified outfit. And it doesn’t handle criminal defense cases. I thought they’d want to avoid Highhawk. Especially when the case is going to make the Post every day and the client is a notorious grandstander. And I didn’t think John would like it either. But it didn’t work that way.“

  “No,” Chee said. John was John McDermott. Professor John McDermott. Ex-professor. Ex-University of Arizona law faculty. Janet Pete’s mentor, faculty advisor, boss, lover, father figure. The man she’d quit her job with the Navajo Tribe to follow to Washington. Ambitious, successful John. “It doesn’t sound like John’s sort of thing.”

  “It turned out I was wrong about that,” Janet said. “John brought it up. He asked me if I’d like to represent Highhawk.”

  Chee made a surprised face.

  “I said I didn’t think the firm would like it. He said it would be fine with the firm. It would demonstrate its social consciousness.”

  Chee nodded.

  “Bullshit,” Janet said. “Social consciousness!”

  “Why then?”

  Janet started to say something but stopped. She got up again and walked to the window and looked out. Rain streaked the glass. In the office across the street the lights were on. A man was standing at his window looking across at them. Chee noticed he had his coat off. Vest and tie but no coat. It made Chee feel more cheerful.

  “You have an idea why, don’t you?” Chee said.

  “I don’t know,” Janet said to the window.

  “You could guess,” Chee said.

  “I can guess,” she agreed. “We have a client. The Sunbelt Corporation. It’s a big factor in real estate development, apartment complexes, that sort of thing. They bought a ranch outside Albuquerque. From what little I know about it, I think they have some sort of big development planned there. She turned away from the window, sat down again, stared at her hands. “Sunbelt is interested in where an interstate bypass is located. It makes a lot of difference in their land values. From what I hear the route Sunbelt favors runs across Tano Pueblo land. The Tano tribal council is split on whether to sell the right of way. The traditionals say no; the progressives see economic development, money.” She glanced up at Chee. “The old familiar story.”

  “It does sound familiar,” Chee said. When she got around to it, Janet Pete would explain to him how all this involved Henry Highhawk, and her being followed. It was still raining outside. He looked at the man in the tie and vest in the window across the street who seemed to be looking at him. Funny town, Washington.

  “They’re having their tribal election sometime this winter,” Janet said. “Youngish guy named Eldon Tamana is a contender against one of the old guard. Tamana favors granting the right of way.” There was another long pause.

  “Good chance of winning?” Chee asked.

  “I’d guess not,” Janet said. She turned and looked at him.

  “I’m getting to be like a white man,” Chee said. “I’m getting in a hurry for you to tell me what this is all about.”

  “I’m not sure I know myself. What I know is that the Smithsonian seems to have in its collection a Tano fetish. It’s a figure representing one of their Twin War Gods. Somehow Tamana found out about it, and I think he knew John at Arizona, and he came to John to talk about how to get it returned.”

  Janet hesitated, looked down at her hands.

  “I’d think that would be fairly simple,” Chee said. “You’d have the Tano tribal council adopt a resolution asking for it back—or maybe have it come from the elders of the kiva society that owned the fetish. Then you’d ask the Smithsonian to return it, and they’d take it under advisement, and do a study to find out where they’d got their hands on it, and after about three years you’d either get it back or you wouldn’t.”

  “I don’t think that would work. Not for Tamana,” Janet said, still studying her hands.

  “Oh?”

  Janet sighed. “Did I tell you he’s running for a position on the tribal council? I guess he wants to just walk in and present the War God, sort of prove he’s a young man who can get things done while the old-timers just talk about it. I doubt if the council knows the museum has the fetish.”

  “Ah,” Chee said. “Are you representing Sunbelt interests in this? I guess Sunbelt has an interest in getting Tamana
elected.”

  “I’m not,” Janet said. “John is. John is the law firm’s Southwestern expert. He gets the stuff which involves public land policy, Indians, uranium, water rights, all the cases like that.”

  “Did he tell you all this?”

  “Mostly he was asking me. I’m the firm’s Indian. Indians are supposed to know about Indians. All us redskins are alike. Mother Earth and Father Sun and all that Walt Disney crap.” She smiled a wan smile. “That’s really not fair to John. He’s not as bad as most. Mostly he understands the cultural differences.”

  “But you think he’s using you?”

  “I think the law firm would like to use me,” Janet corrected. “John works for them. So do I.”

  The gray rain outside, the form of the shirt-sleeved man standing in the window across from them, the narrow, shabby room, all of it was depressing Chee. He got off the bed and tried to pull the drape fully across the window. It helped some.

  “I’m going to wash up,” Chee said. “Then let’s get out of here and get some coffee somewhere.” He wanted to think about what Janet had told him. He could understand her suspicion. The firm wanted her to represent Highhawk because Highhawk worked in a sensitive position for the museum which held Tano sacred objects. Why? Did they want Highhawk to steal the War Twin? Was Janet, as his lawyer, supposed to talk him into doing that?

  “Fine,” Janet said. “We have an appointment with Highhawk. I don’t think I told you about that. Out at his place in Eastern Market.”

  There were two bare bulbs above the washbasin mirror, one of which worked. Chee rinsed his face, looked at himself in the mirror, wondered again what the hell he was doing here. But in some subconscious way he knew now. He was looking forward to another conversation with the man who wanted to be a Navajo.

  Chapter Ten

  « ^ »

  Leaphorn had left his umbrella. He’d thought of it as he boarded the plane at Albuquerque—the umbrella lying dusty in the trunk of his car and the plane flying eastward toward Washington and what seemed to Leaphorn to be inevitable rain. The umbrella had never experienced rain. He’d bought it last year in New York, the second of two umbrellas he’d purchased on the same trip—the first one having been forgotten God knows where. He’d tossed the second one into the trunk of his car with his luggage on his return to the Albuquerque airport. There it had rested for a year.