Talking God jlajc-9

by Tony Hillerman

  “It’s not all that confidential,” Janet said. “But I can imagine what the bar association would say about me talking about a plea bargain with a client right in front of the arresting officer.”

  The office was small and as cluttered as the living area. The desk was a massive old roll top, half buried under shoeboxes filled with scraps of cloth, bone fragments, wood, odds and ends of metal. A battered cardboard box held an unpainted wooden figure carved out of what seemed to be cottonwood root. It stared up at Chee through slanted eye sockets, looking somehow pale and venomous. Some sort of fetish or figurine, obviously. Something Highhawk must be replicating for a museum display. Or could it be the Tano War God? Another box was beside it. Chee pulled back the flaps and looked inside it. He looked into the face of Talking God.

  The mask of the Yeibichai was made as the traditions of the Navajos ruled it must be made—of deerskin surmounted by a bristling crown of eight eagle feathers. The face was painted white. Its mouth protruded an inch or more, a narrow tube of rolled leather. Its eyes were black dots surmounted by painted brows. The lower rim of the mask was a ruff of fox fur. Chee stared at it, surprised. Such masks are guarded, handed down in the family only to a son willing to learn the poetry and ritual of the Night Chant, and to carry the role his father kept as a Yeibichai dancer.

  Keepers of such masks gave the spirits that lived within them feedings of corn pollen. Chee examined this mask. He found no sign of the smearing pollen would have left on the leather. It was probably a replica Highhawk had made. Even so, when he closed the cardboard flaps on the box, he did so reverently.

  Three shelves beside the only window were lined with the wooden figures of the kachina spirits. Mostly Hopi, it seemed to Chee, but he noticed Zuni Mudheads and the great beaked Shalako, the messenger bird from the Zuni heavens, and the striped figures of Rio Grande Pueblo clown fraternities. Most of them looked old and authentic. That also meant expensive.

  Behind him in the front room, Chee heard Janet’s voice rise in argument, and Highhawk’s laugh. He presumed Janet was telling her client during this ironic gesture at confidentiality what she had already told Chee on the walk from the subway. The prosecutor with jurisdiction over crime in Connecticut had more important things on his mind than disturbed graves, especially when they involved a minority political gesture. He would welcome some sort of plea-bargain compromise. Highhawk and attorney would be welcome to come in and discuss it. More than welcome.

  “I don’t think this nut of mine will go for it,” Janet had told Chee. “Henry wants to do a Joan of Arc with all the TV cameras in sharp focus. He’s got the speech already written. ’If this is justice for me, to go to jail for digging up your ancestors, where then is the justice for the whites who dug up the bones of my ancestors?’ He won’t agree, not today anyway, but I’ll make the pitch. You come along and it will give you a chance to talk to him and see what you think.”

  And, sure enough, from the combative tone Chee could hear in Highhawk’s voice, Janet’s client wasn’t going for it. But what the devil was Chee supposed to learn here? What was he supposed to think? That Highhawk was taller than he remembered? And had changed his hairstyle? That wasn’t what Janet expected. She expected him to smell out some sort of plot involving her law firm, and a fellow following her, and a big corporation developing land in New Mexico. He looked around the cluttered office. Fat chance.

  But it was interesting. Flaky as he seemed, Highhawk was an artist. Chee noticed a half-finished Mudhead figure on the table and picked it up. The traditional masks, as Chee had seen them at Zuni Shalako ceremonials, were round, clay-colored, and deformed with bumps. They represented the idiots born after a daughter of the Sun committed incest with her brother. Despite the limiting conventions of little round eyes and little round mouth, Highhawk had carved into the small face of this figurine a kind of foolish glee. Chee put it down carefully and reinspected the kachinas on the shelf. Had Highhawk made them, too? Chee checked. Some of them, probably. Some looked too old and weathered for recent manufacture. But perhaps Highhawk’s profession made him skilled in aging, too.

  It was then he noticed the sketches. They were stacked on the top level of the roll-top desk, done on separate sheets of heavy artist’s paper. The top one showed a boy, a turkey with its feathers flecked with jewels, a log, smoke rising from it as it was burned to hollow it into a boat. The setting was a riverbank, a cliff rising behind it. Chee recognized the scene. It was from the legend of Holy Boy, the legend reenacted in the Yeibichai ceremony. It showed the spirit child, still human, preparing for his journey down the San Juan River with his pet turkey. The artist seemed to have captured the very moment when the illness which was to paralyze him had struck the child. Somehow the few lines which suggested his naked body also suggested that he was falling, in the throes of anguish. And above him, faintly in the very air itself, there was the blue half-round face of the spirit called Water Sprinkler.

  The sound of Highhawk's laugh came from the adjoining room, and Janet Pete's earnest voice. Chee sorted through the other sketches. Holy Boy floating in his hollow log, prone and paralyzed, with the turkey running on the bank beside him—neck and wings outstretched in a kind of frozen panic; Holy Boy, partially cured but now blind, carrying the crippled Holy Girl on his shoulders; the two children, hand in hand, surrounded by the towering figures of Talking God, Growling God, Black God, Monster Slayer, and the other yei—all looking down on the children with the relentless, pitiless neutrality of the Navajo gods toward mortal men. There was something in this scene—something in all these sketches now that he was aware of it—that was troubling. A sort of surreal, off-center dislocation from reality. Chee stared at the sketches, trying to understand. He shook his head, baffled.

  Aside from this element, he was much impressed both by Highhawk’s talent and by the man’s knowledge of Navajo metaphysics. The poetry of the Yeibichai ceremonial usually used didn’t include the role of the girl child. Highhawk had obviously done his homework.

  The doorbell rang, startling Chee. He put down the sketch and went to the office door. Highhawk was talking to someone at the front door, ushering him into the living room.

  It was a man, slender, dark, dressed in the standard uniform of Washington males.

  “As you can see, Rudolfo, my lawyer is always on the job,” Highhawk was saying. The man turned and bowed to Janet Pete, smiling.

  It was Rudolfo Gomez, Mr. Bad Hands.

  “I’ve come at a bad time,” Bad Hands said. “I didn’t notice Miss Pete’s car outside. I didn’t realize you were having a conference.”

  Jim Chee stepped out of the office. Bad Hands recognized him instantly, and with a sort of controlled shock that seemed to Chee to include not just surprise but a kind of dismay.

  “And this is Jim Chee,” Highhawk said. “You gentlemen have met before. Remember? On the reservation. Mr. Chee is the officer who arrested me. Jim Chee, this is Rudolfo Gomez, an old friend.”

  “Ah, yes,” Bad Hands said. “Of course. This is an unexpected pleasure.”

  “And Mr. Gomez is the man who put up my bail,” Highhawk said to Chee. “An old friend.”

  Bad Hands was wearing his gloves. He made no offer to shake hands. Neither did Chee. It was not, after all, a Navajo custom.

  “Sit down,” Highhawk said. “We were talking about my preliminary hearing.”

  “I’ve come at a bad time,” Bad Hands said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “No. No,” Janet Pete said. “We’re finished. We were just leaving.” She gave Chee the look.

  “Right,” Chee said. “We have to go.”

  A cold wind out of the northwest had blown away the drizzle. They walked down the steps from Highhawk’s porch and passed a blue Datsun parked at the sidewalk. It wasn’t the car Bad Hands had been driving at the Agnes Tsosie place, but that had been three thousand miles away. That one was probably rented. “What’d you think?” Janet Pete asked.

  “I don’t k
now,” Chee said. “He’s an interesting man.”

  “Gomez or Highhawk?”

  “Both of them,” Chee said. “I wonder what happened to Gomez’s hands. I wonder why Highhawk calls him an old friend. But I meant Highhawk. He’s interesting.”

  “Yeah,” Janet said. “And suicidal. He’s flat determined to go to jail.” They walked a little. “Stupid son of a bitch,” she added. “I could get him off with some community service time and a suspended sentence.”

  “You know anything about this Gomez guy?” Chee asked.

  “Just what I told you and what Highhawk said. Old friends. Gomez posted his bail.”

  ’They’re not old friends,“ Chee said. ”I told you that. I saw them meet at that Yeibichai where I arrested him. Highhawk had never seen the guy before.“

  “You sure of that? How do you know?”

  “I know,” Chee said.

  Janet put her hand on his arm, slowed. “There he is,” she said in a tiny voice. “That car. That’s the man who’s been following me.”

  The car was parked across the street from them. An aging Chevy two-door, its medium color hard to distinguish in the shadows.

  “You sure?” Chee said.

  “See the radio antenna? Bent like that? And the dent in the back fender? It’s the same car.” Janet was whispering. “I really looked at it. I memorized it.”

  What to do? His inclination was to ignore this situation, to simply walk past the car and see what happened. Nothing would happen, except Janet would think he was a nerd. He felt uneasy. On the reservation, he would have simply trotted across the street and confronted the driver. But confront him with what? Here Chee felt inept and incompetent. This entire business seemed like something one saw on television. It was urban. It seemed dangerous but it was probably just silly. What the devil would the Washington Police Department recommend in such a circumstance?

  They were still walking very slowly. “What should we do?” Janet asked.

  “Stay here,” Chee said. “I’ll go see about it.”

  He walked diagonally across the street, watching the dim light reflecting from the driver’s-side window. What would he do if the window started down? If he saw a gun barrel? But the window didn’t move.

  Beside the car now, Chee could see a man behind the steering wheel, looking at him.

  Chee tapped on the glass. Wondering why he was doing this. Wondering what he would say.

  Nothing happened. Chee waited. The man behind the wheel appeared to be motionless.

  Chee tapped on the window again, rapping the glass with the knuckles of his right hand.

  The window came down, jerkily, squeaking.

  “Yeah?” the man said. He was looking up at Chee. A small face, freckled. The man had short hair. It seemed to be red. “Whaddaya want?”

  Chee wanted very badly to get a better look at the man. He seemed to be small. Unusually small. Chee could see no sign that he was armed, but that would be hard to tell in the darkness of the front seat.

  “The lady I’m with, she thinks you’ve been following her,” Chee said. “Any reason for her to think that?”

  “Following her?” The man leaned forward toward the window, looking past Chee at Janet Pete waiting across the street. “What for?”

  “I’m asking if you’ve been following her,” Chee said.

  “Hell, no,” the man said. “What is this anyway? Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m a cop,” Chee said, thinking as he said it that it was the first smart thing he’d said in this conversation. And it was more or less true. A good thing to have said as long as this guy didn’t ask for identification.

  The man looked up at him. “You sure as hell don’t look like a cop to me,” he said. “You look like an Indian. Let’s see some identification.”

  “Let’s see your identification,” Chee said.

  “Ah, screw this,” the man said, disappearing from the window. The glass squeaked as he rolled it up. The engine started. The headlights came on. The car rolled slowly away from the curb and down the street. It made a careful right turn and disappeared. Absolutely no hurry.

  Chee watched it go. Through the back window he noticed that only the top of the driver’s head protruded above the back of the seat. A very small driver.

  Chapter Twelve

  « ^ »

  Since boyhood Fleck had been one of those persons who like to worry about one thing at a time. This morning he wanted to worry only about Mama. What the devil was he going to do about her? He was up against the Fat Man’s deadline. Get her out of that nursing home. “Get her out now!” the Fat Man had shouted it at him. “Not one more day!” The only place he’d found to put her wanted first month and last month in advance. With all those so-called incidental expenses they always stuck you with for the private room, that added up to more than six thousand dollars. Fleck had most of it. Plus he had ten thousand coming, and overdue. But that didn’t help him right now. He’d scared the Fat Man enough to hold him a day or two. But he couldn’t count on much more than that. The son of a bitch was the kind who just might call the cops in on him. That wasn’t something Fleck wanted to deal with. Not with Mama involved. He had to get the ten thousand.

  There was another problem. He had to give some thought to that cowboy who’d walked over to his car last night and tapped at the window. What the hell did that mean? The guy looked like an Indian, and he was with that Indian woman who’d been visiting Highhawk. But what did it mean to Fleck? Fleck smelled cop. He sensed danger. There was more going down here than he knew about. That worried him. He needed to know more, and he intended to.

  Fleck pulled into the Dunkin’ Donuts parking area. He was a little early but he noticed that the Ford sedan with the telephone company symbol was already parked. His man was on a stool, the only customer in the place, eating something with a fork. Fleck took the stool next to him.

  “You got it?” Fleck asked.

  “Sure. You got fifty?”

  Fleck handed the man two twenties and a ten and received a folded sheet of paper. He felt foolish as he did it. If he was smart, he could probably have found a way to get this information free without paying this creep in the telephone company. Maybe it was even in the library. He unfolded the paper. It was a section torn from a Washington Convention and Visitors Bureau map of the District of Columbia.

  “I circled the area where they use the 266 prefix,” the man said. “And the little x marks are where the public phone booths are.”

  Only a few x’s, Fleck noticed. Less than twenty. He commented on it.

  “It’s mostly a residential district,” the man explained, “and part of the embassy row. Not much business for pay phones out there. You want a doughnut?”

  “No time,” Fleck said, getting up.

  “Haven’t heard much from you lately,” the man said. “You going out of business?”

  “I’m in a little different line of work right now,” Fleck said, walking toward the door. He stopped. “Would you happen to know of any good nursing homes? Where they take good care of old people?”

  “Don’t know nothing about ’em,” the man said.

  Fleck hurried, even though he had until two P.M. He started on Sixteenth Street, because that’s where the countries without enough money to build on Massachusetts Avenue mostly located their embassies. None of the numbers matched there, although he found two booths with 266 numbers The Client had used earlier. He moved to Seventeenth Street and then Eighteenth. It was there he found the number he was scheduled to call at two P.M. Fleck backed out of the booth and looked up and down the street. No other pay booths in sight. He’d have to rent the car equipped with a mobile telephone. He’d reserved one at Hertz last night, just in case it worked out this way.

  Fleck spent the next two hours driving out to Silver Spring and checking on a rest home he’d heard about out there. It was a little cheaper but the linoleum on the floors was cracked and streaked with grime and the windows hadn’t been
washed and the woman who ran the place had a mean-looking mouth. He picked up the rent-a-car a little after one, a black Lincoln town car which was too big and too showy for Fleck’s taste but which would look natural enough in Washington. He made sure the telephone worked, put his Polaroid camera on the front seat beside him, and drove back to Eighteenth Street. He parked across the street and a little down the block from the phone booth, called it, left his receiver open, and walked down the sidewalk far enough to hear the ringing in the booth. Then he sat behind the wheel, slumped down to be less visible. He waited. While he waited, he thought.

  First he went over his plan for this telephone call. Then he thought about the cowboy walking across the street and rapping at his window. If he was an Indian—and he looked like one—it might tie back to the killing. He’d left the train at the little town in New Mexico. Gallup, it was. Indians everywhere you looked. Probably they even had Indian cops and maybe one of them was looking into it. If that was true it meant they had tracked him back to Washington and somehow or other tied something together with that silly-looking bastard who wore his hair in a bun. That meant they must know a hell of a lot more about what Fleck was involved with than Fleck knew himself.

  That thought made him uneasy. He shifted in the seat and looked out the window at the weather, getting his mind off what would happen to him if the police ever had him in custody, with his fingerprints matched and making the circuit. If it ever got that far, he could kiss his ass good-bye. He could never, ever let that happen. What would Mama do if it did?

  If he could only find someplace where her always getting even didn’t get Mama into trouble. She was too old for that now. She couldn’t get away with it like when she was healthy. Like that time when they were living down there near Tampa when Mama was young and the landlord got the sheriff on to them to make them move out. He remembered Mama down on her stomach behind the stove loosening up something or other on the gas pipe with Delmar standing there handing her the tools. “You can’t let the bastards get up on you,” she was saying. “You hear that, Delmar? If you don’t even it up, they grind you down even more. They spit on you ever’ living time if you don’t teach them you won’t let them do it.”