Talking God jlajc-9

by Tony Hillerman

  “Oh,” Perez said, understanding. “No. There wasn’t anything like that. I remember dumping some newspapers in the waste container. I left the trash for the cleaners.”

  “Did you leave an empty prescription bottle, or box, or vial, or anything?”

  Perez shook his head. “I would have remembered that,” he said. He shook his head again. “Like I’m going to remember that red-headed guy. Standing there looking at me and he had just killed my passenger a few minutes before that.”

  In the taxi heading back for his hotel, Leaphorn sorted it out. He listed it, put it in categories, tried to make what little he knew as neat as he could make it. The final summation. Because this was where it finished. No more leads. None. Pointed Shoes would lie in his anonymous grave, forever lost to those who cared about him. If such humans existed, they would go to their own graves wondering how he had vanished. And why he had vanished. As for Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police, who had no legitimate interest in any of this anyway, he would make a return flight reservation from the hotel. He would return the call of Rodney, who had missed him returning Leaphorn’s call, and take Rodney out to dinner tonight if that was possible. Then he would pack. He would get to the airport tomorrow, fly to Albuquerque, and make the long drive back home to Window Rock. There would be no Emma there waiting for him. No Emma to whom he would report this failure. And be forgiven for it.

  The cab stopped at a red light. The rain had stopped now. Leaphorn dug out his notebook, flipped through it, stared again at “AURANOFIN” and the number which followed it. He glanced at the license of the cab driver posted on the back of the front seat. Susy Mackinnon.

  “Miss Mackinnon,” he said. “Do you know where there’s a pharmacy?”

  “Pharmacy? I think there’s one in that shopping center up in the next block. You feeling okay?”

  “I’m feeling hopeful,” Leaphorn said. “All of a sudden.”

  She glanced back at him, on her face the expression of a woman who is long past being surprised at eccentric passengers. “I’ve found that’s better than despair,” she said.

  The pharmacy in the next block was a Merit Drug. The pharmacist was elderly, gray-haired, and good-natured. “That looks like a prescription number all right,” he said. “But it’s not one of ours.”

  “Is there any way to tell from this whose prescription it is? Name, address, so forth?”

  “Sure. If you tell me where it was filled. If it was ours, see—any Merit Drug anywhere—then we’d have it on the computer. Find it that way.”

  Leaphorn put the notebook back in his jacket pocket. He made a wry face. “So,” he said. “I can start checking all the Washington, D.C., drugstores.”

  “Or maybe the suburbs. Do you know if it was filled in the city?”

  “No way of guessing,” Leaphorn said. “It was just an idea. Looks like a bad one.”

  “If I were you, I’d start with Walgreen’s. There was a W at the start of the numbers, and that looks like their code.”

  “You know where the nearest Walgreen’s might be?”

  “No. But we’ll look that sucker up,” the pharmacist said. He reached for the telephone book. It proved to be just eleven blocks away.

  The pharmacist at Walgreen’s was a young man. He decided Leaphorn’s request was odd and that he should wait for his supervisor, now busy with another customer. Leaphorn waited, conscious that his cab was also waiting, with its meter running. The supervisor was a plump, middle-aged black woman, who inspected Leaphorn’s Navajo Tribal Police credentials and then the number written in his notebook.

  She punched at the keyboard of the computer, looking at Leaphorn over her glasses.

  “Just trying to get an identification? That right? Not a refill or anything?”

  “Right,” Leaphorn said. “The pharmacist at another drugstore told me he thought this was your number.”

  “It looks like it,” the woman said. She examined whatever had appeared on the screen. Shook her head. Punched again at the keyboard.

  Leaphorn waited. The woman waited. She pursed her lips. Punched a single key.

  “Elogio Santillanes,” she said. “Is that how you pronounce it? Elogio Santillanes.” She recited a street address and a telephone number, then glanced at the computer screen again. “And that’s apartment three,” she added. She wrote it all on a sheet of note paper and handed it to Leaphorn. “You’re welcome,” she said.

  Back in the cab Leaphorn read the address to Miss Susy Mackinnon.

  “No more going to the hotel?” she asked.

  “First this address,” Leaphorn said. “Then the hotel.”

  “Your humor has sure improved,” Miss Mackinnon said. “They selling something in Walgreen’s that you couldn’t get in that other drugstore?”

  “The solution to my problem,” Leaphorn said. “And it was absolutely free.”

  “I need to remember that place,” Miss Mackinnon said.

  The rain had begun again—as much drizzle as rain—and she had the wipers turned to that now-and-then sequence. The blades flashed across the glass and clicked out of sight, leaving brief clarity behind. “You know,” she said, “you’re going to have a hell of a tab. Waiting time and now this trip. I hope you’re good for about thirty-five or forty dollars when you finally get where you’re going. I wouldn’t want to totally tap you out. My intention is to leave you enough for a substantial tip.”

  “Um,” Leaphorn said, not really hearing the question. He was thinking of what he would find at apartment number three. A woman. He took that for granted. And what he would say to her? How much would he tell her? Everything, he thought, except the grisly details. Leaphorn’s good mood had been erased by the thought of what lay ahead. But in the long run it would be better for her to know everything. He remembered the endless weeks which led to Emma’s death. The uncertainty. The highs of hope destroyed by reality and followed by despair. He would be the destroyer of this woman’s hope. But then the wound could finally close. She could heal.

  Miss Mackinnon seemed to have sensed he no longer wanted conversation. She drove in silence. Leaphorn rolled a window down an inch in defiance of the rain, letting in the late-autumn smell of the city. What would he do next, after the awful interview ahead? He would notify the FBI. Better to call Kennedy in Gallup, he thought, and let him initiate the action. Then he would call the McKinley County Sheriffs office and give them the identification. Not much the sheriff could do with such information but professional courtesy required it. And then he would go and call Rodney. It would be good to have some company this evening.

  “Here you are,” Miss Mackinnon said. She slowed the cab to avoid an old Chevy sedan which was backing into a parking space, and then stopped the cab in front of a two-story brick building with porches, built in a U shape around a landscaped central patio. “You want me to wait? It’s expensive.”

  “Please wait,” Leaphorn said. When he had broken the news here, he didn’t want to wait around.

  He walked down the pathway, following the man who had disembarked from the Chevy. Apartment one seemed to be vacant. The driver of the Chevy unlocked the door of apartment two and disappeared inside after a backward glance at Leaphorn. At apartment three, Leaphorn looked at the doorbell button. What would he say? I am looking for the widow of Elogio Santillanes. I am looking for a relative of Elogio Santillanes. Is this the residence of Elogio Santillanes?

  From inside the apartment Leaphorn heard voices, faintly. Male and then female. Then he heard the sound of music. He rang the bell.

  Now he heard only music. Abruptly that stopped. Leaphorn removed his hat. He stared at the door, shifting his weight. From the eaves of the porch behind him there came the sound of water dripping. On the street in front of the apartment a car went by. Leaphorn shifted his feet again. He pushed the doorbell button again, heard the ringing break the silence inside. He waited.

  Behind him, he heard the door of apartment two opening. The man who had p
arked the Chevy stood in the doorway peering out at him. He was a small man and on this dim, rainy afternoon his form was backlit by the lamps in his apartment, making him no more than a shape.

  Leaphorn pushed the button again and listened to the ring. He reached into his coat and got out the folder which held his police credentials. He sensed that behind him the man was still watching. Then he heard the sound of a lock being released. The door opened about a foot. A woman looked out at him, a middle-aged woman, slender, a thin face with glasses, black hair pulled severely back.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “My name is Leaphorn,” he said. He held out the folder, letting it drop open to reveal his badge. “I am looking for the residence of Elogio Santillanes.”

  The woman closed her eyes. Her head bent slightly forward. Her shoulders slumped. Behind her, from some part of the room beyond Leaphorn’s vision, came the sound of a sharp intake of breath.

  “Are there relatives of Mr. Santillanes living here?” Leaphorn asked.

  “Yo soy,” the woman said, her eyes still closed. And then, in English: “Yes.” She was pale. She reached out, felt for the door, clutched it.

  Leaphorn thought, the news I am bringing her is not news. It is something she anticipated. Something her instincts told her was inevitable. He knew the feeling. He had lived with it for months, knowing that Emma was dying. It was a fate already faced. But that didn’t matter. There was still no humane way to tell her even though her heart had already given her the warning.

  “Mrs. Santillanes?” he said. “Is there someone here with you? Some friend or relative?”

  The woman opened her eyes. “What do you want?”

  “I want to tell you about your husband.” He shook his head. “It’s bad news.”

  A man wearing a loose blue sweater appeared beside the woman. He was as old as Leaphorn, gray and stocky. He stood rigidly erect and peered at Leaphorn through the thick lenses of dark-rimmed glasses. A soldier, Leaphorn thought. “Sir,” he said, in a loud, stern voice. “What can I do for you?”

  The woman put her hand on the man’s arm. She spoke in Spanish. Leaphorn didn’t catch her words. The man said “Callate!” sharply, and then, more gently, something that Leaphorn didn’t understand. The woman looked at Leaphorn as if remembering his face would be terribly important to her. Then she nodded, bit her lip, bowed, and disappeared from the room.

  “You asked about a man named Santillanes,” the man said. “He does not live here.”

  “I came looking for his relatives,” Leaphorn said. “I’m afraid I bring bad news.”

  “We do not know him,” the man said. “No one of that name lives here.”

  “This was the address he gave,” Leaphorn said.

  The man’s expression became totally blank—a poker player staring at his cards. “He gave an address to you?” he asked. “And when was that?”

  Leaphorn didn’t hurry to answer that. The man was lying, of course. But why would he be lying?

  “He gave this address to the pharmacist where he buys his medicine,” Leaphorn said.

  “Ah,” the man said. He produced a slight smile. “Then he has been sick. I trust this man, this Santillanes, is feeling better now.”

  “No,” Leaphorn said. They stood there in the doorway, both of them waiting. Leaphorn had sensed some motion behind him. He shifted his weight enough to see the entrance of apartment two. The door was almost closed now. But not quite. Through it he could see the shadow of the small man, listening.

  “He is not better? Then he is worse?”

  “I should not be wasting your time with this,” Leaphorn said. “Did Elogio Santillanes live here once and move away? Do you know where I might find any of his relatives? Or a friend?”

  The gray man shook his head.

  “I will go then,” Leaphorn said. “Thank you very much. Please tell the lady I am sorry I disturbed her.”

  “Ah.” The man hesitated. “You have made me curious. What happened to this fellow, this Santillanes?”

  “He’s dead,” Leaphorn said.

  “Dead.” There was no surprise. “How?”

  “He was stabbed,” Leaphorn said.

  “When did this happen?” Still there was no surprise. But Leaphorn could see the muscle along his jaw tighten. “And where did it happen?”

  “Out in New Mexico. About a month ago.”

  Leaphorn put his hand on the man’s arm. “Listen,” he said. “Do you know why this man Santillanes would have gone to New Mexico? What interest did he have in going to see a woman named Agnes Tsosie?”

  The man pulled his arm away. He swallowed, his eyes misty with grief. He looked away from Leaphorn, toward his feet. “I don’t know Elogio Santillanes,” he said. And he carefully shut the door.

  Leaphorn stood for a moment staring at the wood, sorting this out. The puzzle that had brought him here was solved. Clearly solved. No doubt about it. Or only the shadow of a doubt. The man with the worn, pointed shoes was Elogio Santillanes, the husband (perhaps brother) of this dark-haired woman. The brother (perhaps friend) of this gray-haired man. No more question of the identity of Pointed Shoes. Now there was another puzzle, new and fresh.

  He walked down the porch, noticing that the door to apartment two was now closed but the light still illuminated the drapery. A dark afternoon, the kind of weather Leaphorn rarely saw on the Arizona-New Mexico border, and which quickly affected his mood. His taxi was waiting at the curb. Miss Mackinnon sat with a book propped on the steering wheel, reading.

  Leaphorn turned and walked back to apartment two. He pushed the doorbell button. This one buzzed. He waited, thinking that people in Washington are slow to come to their doors. The door opened and the small man stood in it, looking at him.

  “I need some information,” Leaphorn said. “I’m looking for Elogio Santillanes.”

  The small man shook his head. “I don’t know him.”

  “Do you know those people in that apartment over there?” Leaphorn nodded toward it. “I understand Santillanes lives in this building.”

  The man shook his head. Behind him in the apartment Leaphorn could see a folding card table with a telephone on it, a folding lawn chair, a cardboard box which seemed to contain books. A cheap small-screen television set perched on another box. The sound was turned off but the tube carried a newscast, in black and white. Otherwise the room seemed empty. A newspaper was on the floor beside the lawn chair. Perhaps the man had been reading there when the doorbell rang. Leaphorn suddenly found himself as interested in this small man as he was in the slim chance of getting information that had brought him here.

  “You don’t know the names of the people?” Leaphorn asked. He asked it partly to extend this conversation and see where it might lead. But there was a note of disbelief in his voice. Old as he was, Leaphorn still found it incredible that people could live side by side, see each other every day, and not be acquainted.

  “Who are you?” the small man asked. “Are you an Indian?”

  “I’m a Navajo,” Leaphorn said. He reached for his identification. But he thought better of that.

  “From where?”

  “Window Rock.”

  “That’s in—” The man hesitated, thinking. “Is it in New Mexico?”

  “It’s in Arizona,” Leaphorn said.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for Elogio Santillanes.”

  “Why? What do you want with him?”

  Leaphorn’s eyes had been locked with the small man’s. They were a sort of greenish blue and Leaphorn sensed in them, in the man’s tone and his posture, a kind of hostile resentment.

  “I just need information,” Leaphorn said.

  “I can’t help you,” the man said. He closed the door. Leaphorn heard the security chain rattle into place.

  Miss Mackinnon started the motor as soon as he climbed into the backseat of the taxi. “I hope you got a lot of money,” she said. “Back to the hotel now? And get you
r traveler’s checks out of the safe-deposit box.“

  “Right,” Leaphorn said.

  He was thinking of the small man’s strange, intent eyes, of his freckles, of his short, curly red hair. There must be thousands of short men in Washington who fit the Perez description of the man searching the roomette of Elogio Santillanes. But Leaphorn had never believed in coincidence. He had found the widow of Santillanes. He was sure of that. The widow or perhaps a sister. Certainly, he had found someone who had loved him.

  And almost as certainly, he had found the man who had killed him. Going back to Window Rock could wait a little. He wanted to understand this better.

  Chapter Fourteen

  « ^ »

  Over lunch, the day after their visit to Highhawk’s house, Chee and Janet Pete had discussed the man waiting in the sedan. “I think he was watching Highhawk, not you,” Chee had said. “I think that’s why he was parked out there.” And Janet had finally said maybe so, but he could tell she wasn’t persuaded by his logic. She was nervous. Uneasy about it. So he didn’t tell her something else he had concluded—that the little man was one of the sort policemen call “freaks.” At least the desert-country cops with whom Chee worked called them that—those men who have been somehow damaged beyond fear into a species that is unpredictable, and therefore dangerous. Finding a strange man tapping at his window in the darkness hadn’t shaken the small man in the slightest. That was obvious. It had only aroused curiosity, and then provoked a sort of aggressive macho anger. Chee had seen that in such men before.

  He had given Janet his analysis of Highhawk. (“He’s nuts. Perfectly normal in some ways, but his sketches, they show you he’s tilted about nine degrees. Slightly crazy.”) And he told her of the carving of the fetish he’d seen in Highhawk’s office-studio.

  “He was carving it out of cottonwood root—which is what the Pueblo people like to use, at least the ones I know. The Zunis and the Hopis,” Chee had said. “No reason to believe Tano would be any different. Maybe he was making a copy of the Twin War God.”