Talking God jlajc-9

by Tony Hillerman

  Chee yawned, and stretched, and rose stiffly from his chair to prowl the office. A framed certificate on the wall declared that his host had successfully completed studies in anthropological conservation and restoration at the London Institute of Archaeology. Another certified his completion with honors of a materials conservation graduate program at George Washington University. Still another recognized his contribution to a seminar on “Conservation Implications of the Structure, Reactivity, Deterioration, and Modification of Proteinaceous Artifact Material” for the American Institute of Archaeology

  Chee was looking for something to read and thinking that Highhawk’s few minutes had stretched a bit when he heard the sounds—a sharp report, a clatter of miscellaneous noises with what might have been a yell mixed in. It was an unpleasant noise and it stopped Chee cold. He caught his breath, listening. Whatever it was ended as abruptly as it had started. He walked to the door and looked up and down the hallway, listening. The immense sixth floor of the Museum of Natural History was as silent as a cave. The noise had come from his right. Chee walked down the hallway in that direction, slowly, soundlessly. He stopped at a closed door, gripped the knob, tested it. Locked. He put his ear to the panel and heard nothing but the sound his own blood made moving through his arteries. He moved down the hallway, conscious of the rows of wooden bins through which he walked, of the smells, of dust, of old things decaying. Then he stopped again and stood absolutely still, listening. He heard nothing but ringing silence and, after a moment, what might have been an elevator descending in another part of the building.

  Then steps. Rapid steps. From ahead and to the left. Chee hurried to the corridor corner ahead, looked around it. It was empty. Simply another narrow pathway between deep stacks of numbered bins. He listened again. Where had the hurrier gone? What had caused those odd noises? Chee had no idea which way to look. He simply stood, leaning against a bin, and listened. Silence rang in his ears. Whoever, whatever, had made the noise had gone away.

  He walked back to Highhawk’s office, suppressing an urge to look back, controlling an urge to hurry. And when he reached it, he closed the door firmly behind him and moved his chair against the wall so that it faced the door. When he sat in it he suddenly felt very foolish. The noise would have some perfectly normal explanation. Something had fallen. Someone had dropped something heavy.

  He resumed his explorations of the documents on Highhawk’s untidy desk, looking for something interesting. They tended toward administrative documents and technical material. He selected a photocopy of a report entitled

  ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN CONSERVING ETHNOGRAPHIC MUSEUM OBJECTS

  and settled down to read it.

  It was surprisingly interesting—some twenty-five pages full of information and ideas mostly new to Chee. He read it carefully and slowly, stopping now and then to listen. Finally he put it back on the desk, put his heels back on the wastebasket, and thought about Mary Landon, and then about Janet Pete, and then about Highhawk. He glanced at his watch. After ten. Highhawk had been gone more than thirty minutes. He walked to the door and looked up and down the corridor. Total emptiness. Total silence. He sat again in the chair, feet on the floor, remembering exactly what Highhawk had said. He’d said wait here a few minutes. Ten or fifteen.

  Chee got his hat and went out into the corridor, turning off the light and closing the door behind him. He found his way through the labyrinth of corridors to the elevator. He pushed the button and heard it laboring its way upward. Highhawk obviously had not returned by this route. On the ground floor he found his way to the Twelfth Street exit. There had been a security guard there when he came in, a woman who had spoken to Highhawk. She would know if he’d left the building. But the woman wasn’t there. No one was guarding the exit door.

  Chee felt a sudden irrational urge to get out of this building and under the sky. He pushed the door open and hurried down the steps. The cold, misty air felt wonderful on his face. But where was Highhawk? He remembered the last words Highhawk had said as he left him at Highhawk’s office:

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  « ^ »

  Leaphorn called Kennedy from his hotel room and caught him at home.

  “I’ve got him,” Leaphorn said. “His name is Elogio Santillanes. But I need you to get a fingerprint check made and see if the Bureau has anything on him.”

  “Who?” Kennedy said. He sounded sleepy. “What are you talking about?”

  “The man beside the tracks. Remember? The one you got me out into the weather to take a look at.”

  “Oh,” Kennedy said. “Yeah. Santillanes, you say. A local Hispano then, after all. How’d you get a make on him?”

  Leaphorn explained it all, from St. Germain to Perez to the prescription number, including the little red-haired man who might (or might not) be watching the Santillanes apartment.

  “Nice to be lucky,” Kennedy said. “Where the hell you calling from? You in Washington now?”

  Leaphorn gave him the name of his hotel. “I’m going to stay here—or at least I’ll be here for message purposes. Are you going to call Washington?”

  “Why not?” Kennedy said.

  “Would you ask ’em to let me know what they find out? And since they probably won’t do it, would you call me as soon as they call you back?”

  “Why not?” Kennedy said. “You going to stick around there until we know something?”

  “Why not?” Leaphorn said. “It shouldn’t take long with the name. Either they have prints on him or they don’t.”

  It didn’t take long. Leaphorn watched the late news. He went out for a walk in what had now transformed itself into a fine, damp, cold mist. He bought an edition of tomorrow’s Washington Post and read it in bed. He woke late, had breakfast in the hotel coffee shop, and found his telephone ringing when he got back to the room.

  It was Kennedy.

  “Bingo,” Kennedy said. “I am sort of a hero with the Bureau this morning—which will last until about sundown. Your Elogio Santillanes was in the Bureau print files. He was one of the relatively few surviving leaders of the substantially less than loyal left-wing opposition to the Pinochet regime in Chile.”

  “Well,” Leaphorn said. “That’s interesting.” But what the devil did it mean? What would call a Chilean politician to Gallup, New Mexico? What would arouse in such a man an interest in a Night Chant somewhere out beyond Lower Greasewood?

  “They wondered what had happened to him,” Kennedy was saying. “He wasn’t exactly under close surveillance, but the Bureau tries to keep an eye on such folks. It tries to keep track of them. Especially this bunch because of that car bombing awhile back. You remember about that?”

  “Very vaguely. Was it Chilean?”

  “It was. One of this bunch that Santillanes belongs to got blown sky-high over on Sheridan Circle, near where the very important people live. The Chilean embassy crowd didn’t make enough effort to hide their tracks and the Department of State declared a bunch of them persona non grata and sent them home. There was a big protest to Chile, human rights complaints, the whole nine yards. Terribly bad publicity for the Pinochet gang. Anyway after that the Bureau seems to have kept an eye on them. And things cooled down.”

  “Until now,” Leaphorn said.

  “It looks to me like Pinochet’s thugs waited until they figured they wouldn’t get caught at it,” Kennedy said. “But how do I know?”

  “That would explain all the effort to keep Santillanes from being identified.”

  “It would,” Kennedy agreed. “If there’s no identification, there’s no static from the Department of State.”

  “Did you ask your people here to give me a call? Did you tell them about Santillanes’ neighbor? And did you pass along what I told you about Henry Highhawk’s name being in Santillanes’ notebook?”

  “Yes, I told them about the little man in apartment two, and, yes, I mentioned Henry Highhawk, and, yes, I asked
them to give Joe Leaphorn a call. Have they called?”

  “Of course not,” Leaphorn said.

  Kennedy laughed. “Old J. Edgar’s dead, but nothing ever changes.”

  But they did call. Leaphorn had hardly hung up when he heard knocking at his door.

  Two men waited in the hall. Even in Washington, where every male—to Leaphorn’s casual eye—dressed exactly like every other male, these two were obviously Bureau men.

  “Come in,” Leaphorn said, glancing at the identification each man was now holding out for inspection, “I’ve been sort of expecting you.”

  He introduced himself. Their names were Dillon and Akron, both being blond, Dillon being bigger and older and in charge.

  “Your name is Leaphorn? That right?” Dillon said, glancing in his notebook. “You have identification?”

  Leaphorn produced his folder.

  Dillon compared Leaphorn’s face with the picture. He examined the credentials. Nothing in his expression suggested he was impressed by either.

  “A lieutenant in the Navajo Tribal Police?”

  “That’s right.”

  Dillon stared at him. “How did you get involved in this Santillanes business?”

  Leaphorn explained. The body beside the tracks. Learning the train had been stopped. Learning of the abandoned luggage. Learning of the prescription number. Going to the apartment on the prescription address.

  “Have you checked on the man in apartment two?” Leaphorn asked. “He fit the description of the man the attendant saw in Santillanes’ roomette. And he was curious.”

  Akron smiled slightly and looked down at his hands. Dillon cleared his throat. Leaphorn nodded. He knew what was coming. He had worked with the Bureau for thirty years.

  “You have no jurisdiction in this case,” Dillon said. “You never had any jurisdiction. You may have already fouled up a very sensitive case.”

  “Involving national security,” Leaphorn added, thoughtfully and mostly to himself. He didn’t intend any sarcasm. It was simply the code expression he’d been hearing the FBI use since the 1950s. It was something you always heard when the Bureau was covering up incompetence. He was simply wondering if the Bureau’s current screwup was considered serious by Dillon’s superiors. Apparently so.

  Dillon stared at him, scenting sarcasm. He saw nothing on Leaphorn’s square Navajo face but deep thought. Leaphorn was thinking about how he could extract information from Dillon and he had reached some sort of conclusion. He nodded.

  “Did Agent Kennedy mention to you about the slip of paper found in Santillanes’ shirt pocket?”

  Dillon’s expression shifted from stern to unpleasant. He took his lip between his teeth. Released it. Started to say something. Changed his mind. Pride struggled with curiosity. “I am not aware of that at this point in time,” he said.

  So there was no purpose in talking to Dillon about it. But he wanted Dillon’s goodwill. “Nothing was written on it except the name Agnes Tsosie—Tsosie is a fairly common Navajo name, and Agnes is prominent in the tribe—and the name of a curing ceremonial. The Yeibichai. One of those had been scheduled to be held for Mrs. Tsosie. Scheduled about three or four weeks after the Santillanes body was found.”

  “What is your interest in this?” Dillon asked.

  “The agent-in-charge at Gallup is an old friend,” Leaphorn said. “We’ve worked together for years.”

  Dillon was not impressed with “agent-in-charge at Gallup.” As a matter of fact, an agent stationed in Washington wasn’t easy to impress with an agent stationed anywhere else, much less a small Western town. In earlier days agents were transferred to places like Gallup because they had somehow offended J. Edgar Hoover or one of the swarm of yeasayers with which he had manned the upper echelons of his empire. In J. Edgar’s day, New Orleans had been the ultimate Siberia of the Bureau. J. Edgar detested New Orleans as hot, humid, and decadent and presumed all other FBI employees felt the same way. But since his demise, his camp followers usually exiled to smaller towns agents considered unduly ambitious, unacceptably intelligent, or prone to bad publicity.

  “It’s still not your case,” Dillon said. “You don’t have any jurisdiction outside your Indian reservation. And in this case, you wouldn’t have jurisdiction even there.”

  Leaphorn smiled. “And happy I don’t,” he said. “It looks too complicated for me. But I’m curious. I’ve got to get with Pete Domenici for lunch before I go home, and he’s going to want to know what I’m doing here.”

  Agent Akron had sat down in a bedside chair just out of Leaphorn’s vision but Leaphorn kept his eye on Dillon while he said this. Obviously, Dillon recognized the name of Pete Domenici, the senior senator from New Mexico, who happened to be the ranking Republican on the committee which oversaw the Bureau’s budget. Leaphorn smiled at Dillon again—a conspiratorial one-cop-to-another smile. “You know how some people are about homicides. Pete is fascinated by ’em. I tell Pete about Santillanes and he’s going to have a hundred questions.”

  “Domenici,” Dillon said.

  “One thing the senator is going to ask me is why Santillanes was killed way out in New Mexico,” Leaphorn said. “Out in his district.”

  Leaphorn watched Dillon making up his mind, imagining the process. He would think that probably Leaphorn was lying about Domenici, which he was, but Dillon hadn’t survived in Washington by taking chances. Dillon reached his decision.

  “I can’t talk about what he was doing out there,” Dillon said. “Agent Akron and I are with the antiterrorist division. And I can say Santillanes was a prominent member of a terrorist organization.”

  “Oh,” Leaphorn said.

  “Opposed to the regime of President Pinochet.” Dillon looked at Leaphorn. “He’s the president of Chile,” Dillon added.

  Leaphorn nodded. “But you can’t tell me why Santillanes was out in New Mexico?” He nodded again. “I can respect that.” In the code the FBI had developed down the years, it meant Dillon didn’t know the answer.

  “I cannot say,” Dillon said. “Not at this moment in time.”

  “How about why he was killed?”

  “Just speculation,” Dillon said. “Off the record.”

  Leaphorn nodded, agreeing.

  “The effort that was made to avoid identification suggests that it was a continuation of the Pinochet administration’s war against the Communists in Chile,” Dillon said. He paused, studying Leaphorn to see if this needed explanation. He decided that it did.

  “Some time ago, a Chilean dissident was blown up here in Washington. A car bomb. The State Department deported several Chilean nationals and delivered a warning to the ambassador. Or so I understand.” Dillon returned the same cop-to-cop smile he had received a few moments earlier from Leaphorn. “Therefore, the Chilean security people at the embassy seem to have decided they would wait until one of their targets was as far from Washington as possible before eliminating him. They would try to make sure the connection was never made.”

  “I see,” Leaphorn said. “I have two more questions.”

  Dillon waited.

  “What will the Bureau do about the little man in apartment two?”

  “I can’t discuss that,” Dillon said.

  “That’s fair enough. Does the name Henry Highhawk mean anything to you?”

  Dillon considered. “Henry Highhawk. No.”

  “I think Kennedy mentioned him when he called the Bureau,” Leaphorn prompted.

  “Oh, yeah,” Dillon said. “The name in the notebook.”

  “How does this Henry Highhawk fit in? Why would Santillanes be interested in him? Why was he interested in Agnes Tsosie? Or the Yeibichai ceremonial?“

  “Yeibichai ceremonial?” Dillon said, looking totally baffled. “I am not free to discuss any of that. At this point in time I cannot discuss Henry Highhawk.”

  But Henry Highhawk stuck in Leaphorn’s mind. The name had been somehow familiar the first time he’d seen it written in the Santillanes not
ebook. It was an unusual name and it had rung some sort of dim bell in his memory. He remembered looking at the name in Santillanes’ careful little script and trying to place it, without any luck. He remembered looking at Highhawk’s photograph at Agnes Tsosie’s place. He knew he had never seen the man before. When Dillon and Akron had gone away to wherever FBI agents go, he tried again. Clearly the name had meant nothing to Dillon. Clearly, Leaphorn himself must have run across it before any of this business had begun. How? What had he been doing? He had been doing nothing unusual. Just routine police administration.

  He reached for the telephone and dialed the Navajo Tribal Police building in Window Rock. In about eleven minutes he had what he wanted. Or most of it.

  “A fugitive warrant? What was the original offense? Really? What date? No, I meant the date of the arrest? Where? Give me his home address off the warrant.” Leaphorn jotted down the Washington address. “Who handled the arrest for us? I’ll wait.” Leaphorn waited. “Who?”

  The arresting officer was Jim Chee.

  “Well, thanks,” Leaphorn said. “Is Chee still stationed up at Shiprock? Okay. I’ll call him there.”

  He dialed the number of the Shiprock sub-agency police station from memory. Office Chee was on vacation. Had he left an address where he might be reached? Navajo Tribal Police rules required that he would, but Chee had a reputation for sometimes making his own rules.

  “Just a second,” the clerk said. “Here it is. He’s in Washington, D.C. I’ll give you his hotel.”

  Leaphorn called Chee’s hotel. Yes, Chee was still registered. But he didn’t answer his telephone. Leaphorn left a message and hung up. He sat on the bed, asking himself what could have possibly drawn Officer Jim Chee from Shiprock to Washington. Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn had never, never believed in coincidence.