Talking God jlajc-9

by Tony Hillerman

  “Go on,” Leaphorn said.

  “So Highhawk was making a duplicate mask. A replica of the genuine Yeibichai mask in the museum’s collection. A copy. He must have had both of them here last night.” Chee picked up the yei mask by its fur collar ruff and held it up, facing Leaphorn.

  “This mask we have here, it’s not the genuine Yeibichai mask,” Chee said. “It’s just about an exact replica. Highhawk made it because he wouldn’t use the real one in a public display, and he certainly wouldn’t have rigged up his tape player inside of it.”

  “It looks old as the mountains to me,” Leaphorn said. “Cracked and worn.”

  “He’s good at that,” Chee said. “But take a look at it. Up close. Look for pollen stains, along the cheeks where the medicine man puts it when he feeds the mask, and on the end of the mouthpiece. And down into the leather tube that forms the mouth. It’s not there. No stains. He dried the buckskin somehow, or got an old piece, and dried out the paint, but why bother with the pollen stains? Nobody would notice it.”

  “No,” Leaphorn said slowly. “Nobody would. So the mask on exhibit downstairs is the genuine Yeibichai mask.”

  “So who put it there?” Leaphorn mused. “Whoever killed Highhawk must have put it there, wouldn’t you say? But—” Leaphorn stopped, midsentence. “Where is that Yeibichai display?”

  “It’s sort of off to one side, to the left of the center of the mask exhibition. Right across from it is an exhibition of Andean stuff, Incan and so forth. The high point is a gold and emerald mask which some Chilean general is trying—” Now it was Chee’s turn to halt, midthought. “My God!” he said. “Dr. Hartman said this Chilean general—I think he’s the head of their political police—was supposed to come in today to look at the thing.”

  He moved toward the door while he was still asking the question, amazingly fast for a man of his age in a three-piece suit. And Jim Chee was right behind him.

  Chapter Twenty

  « ^ »

  Leroy Fleck walked the block and a half to where he’d parked the old Chevy sedan. He walked briskly, but without breaking into a trot, without any sign of urgency that anyone who saw him might remember. The important point was to keep any connection from being made between the crime and the car. If that happened he was a goner. If it didn’t, then he had time to do the things he had to do.

  He drove just at the speed limit, careful at the lights, careful changing lanes, and as he drove he listened to the police scanner on the seat beside him. Nothing much exciting except for a multivehicle, multi-injury accident on the Interstate 66 exit ramp at the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge. He was almost downtown before the call came. A slight strain showed in the laconic voice of the dispatcher and Fleck recognized the address of the nursing home and the code. It meant officer down. It meant nothing else would matter much for a while in D.C. law enforcement. A policeman had been killed. Within fifteen minutes, probably less, Fleck’s description would be broadcast to every police car in the district. The noon newscasts would carry it big. But nobody had his picture and he still had time.

  His first stop was at Western Union. The message he sent to Delmar was short: TAKE CARE OF MAMA. TELL HER I LOVE HER. AM SENDING MONEY ORDER.

  He gave the girl at the desk the message and then opened the plastic purse and counted out $2,033. He thought for a moment. He had almost half a tank of gasoline but he might need to make a telephone call, or pay an admission fee somewhere. He saved the three ones, stuffed them in his shirt pocket. He asked the girl to subtract the transmission fees and make out a money order for the rest. Then he drove to the Chilean embassy.

  He parked down the street at a place where he could watch the entrance gate. Then he walked through the drizzle to the pay booth, dialed the embassy, and gave the woman who answered the word that The Client had given him for emergencies.

  “I need Stone,” he said. He always wondered why the man used that for a code name. Why not something in Spanish?

  “Ah,” the woman said. “One little moment, please.”

  Then he waited. He waited a long time. The rain was mixed with snow now, big wet flakes which stuck to the glass of the booth for a second and then slid down the pane. Fleck went over his plan, but there was nothing much to go over. He would try to lure The Client out where he could reach him. If The Client wouldn’t come out, he would wait. He would get him eventually. He would get as many as he could. He would get ones as important as possible. It was all he could do. He knew The Client wasn’t his own man. He was taking his orders from somebody up the ladder. But it didn’t matter to Fleck. Like Mama said, they were all the same.

  “Yes,” the voice said. It was not The Client’s voice.

  “I got to talk to Stone,” Fleck said.

  “He is not available. Not now.”

  “When then?” Fleck asked.

  “Later today.”

  Perhaps, Fleck thought, he could get someone else. Someone more important. That would be as good. Even better.

  “Let me talk to his superior then.”

  “Just a moment.” Fleck could hear a distant-sounding voice, asking questions.

  “They are getting ready to go,” the man said. “They have no time now.”

  “I have to talk to somebody. It’s an emergency.”

  “No time now. You call back. This evening.”

  The line went dead.

  Fleck looked at it. Hung it up gently. Walked back to his car. It made no difference at all really. He could wait.

  He had waited less than five minutes when the iron driveway gate creaked open and the limousine emerged. After it came another, equally black. They turned downtown, toward Capitol Hill.

  Leroy Fleck trailed them in his rusty Chevy.

  The limos did left turns on Constitution Avenue, rolled past the National Gallery of Art, and pulled to a stop at the Tenth Street entrance to the Museum of Natural History. Fleck pulled his Chevy into a No Parking zone, turned off the ignition, and watched.

  Seven men emerged from the two limos. Fleck recognized The Client. Of the others, one carried cameras and a camera bag, and two more were burdened by a movie camera, tripods, and what Fleck guessed must be sound recording equipment. The remaining three were a short, plump man in a fur-collared coat; a tall, elegantly dressed man with a mustache; and a burly, hard-looking weightlifter type with a crooked nose. The driver from the front limo held a black umbrella over Mustache, protecting him from the wet snowflakes until the entourage reached the shelter of the museum entrance. Fleck sat a moment, sorting them out in his mind. The plump man would probably be the ambassador himself, or at least someone high on the power ladder. The elegant man would be a visiting Very Important Person, the one he’d read about in the Post. Judging from who got the umbrella, the visitor outranked the ambassador and rated the personal attention of The Client. The weightlifter type would be the VIP’s personal muscle. As for The Client, Fleck had pegged him long ago as the man in charge of security at the embassy. In all they made a formidable bunch.

  Fleck climbed out of the Chevy without bothering to take the key out of the ignition or to lock the door. He was finished with the Chevy now. No more need for it. He trotted up the museum steps and into the entrance foyer. The last two cameramen from the limo delegation were disappearing through a doorway into the central hall. They hurried into a side hallway to his right, under a banner which read THE MASKED GODS OF THE AMERICAS. Fleck followed.

  There were perhaps fifty or sixty people in the exhibit of masks. Two-thirds of them looked to Fleck like a mixture of standard tourists. The rest were reporters and television cameramen and museum functionaries who must have been here waiting for Big Shot and his followers to appear. Now they were clustered around the elegant man. The Client stood a little aside from the central knot. He was doing his job. He was watching, his eyes checking everyone. They rested a moment on Fleck, then dismissed him and moved on.

  The Client would have to be first, Fleck decided. He was th
e professional. Then he would go for the VIP. Fleck was conscious that he held two advantages. None of them had ever seen him and they wouldn’t be expecting an attack. He would have total surprise on the first one he hit, and maybe a little surprise left on number two if there was enough confusion. He would need more luck than he could expect to take out the third one, but it was worth a try.

  A cameraman’s strobe flash lit the scene. Then another one. They were setting up some sort of filming apparently, with the VIP over by the display of South American stuff. Beside Fleck was an exhibit of masked dancers, big as life. Apparently some sort of American Indians. Fleck stooped, slipped the shank out of his boot, and held it in his palm, the honed blade hidden by his sleeve. Then he waited. He wanted the crowd to be exactly big enough. He wanted the time to be exactly right.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  « ^ »

  This Miguel Santero, was that his name? This guy with the mutilated hands, did you see any sign of him around here last night?“

  Leaphorn was standing exactly in front of the vertical line formed by the junction of the elevator doors, staring at the crack as he asked the question. It seemed to Chee that the elevator was barely moving. Why hadn’t they looked for the stairs? Six flights. They could have run down six flights while this incredibly slow elevator was dropping one.

  “I didn’t see him,” Chee said. “I just had a feeling that it was Santero on the telephone.”

  “I wish we knew for sure how he connects,” Leaphorn said, without relaxing his stare at the elevator door. “Three slim threads is all we have—or maybe four—tying him to the Santillanes bunch. The FBI connects him, but the FBI has a bad habit of buying bad information. Second, after Santillanes was killed going to find Highhawk, Santero went out and found him. Maybe that was just a coincidence. Third, the little red-headed man who killed Santillanes seems to have been following Santero too.“

  The elevator’s floor indicator passed three and sank toward two. Leaphorn watched it. He got Chee to explain how the displays were arranged. He told Chee what he’d seen in the Post about General Huerta Cardona demanding return of the Incan mask. If he felt any of the anxiety which was causing Chee to chew relentlessly on his lower lip, he didn’t allow it to show.

  “What’s the fourth?” Chee said.

  Leaphorn’s mind had left this part of the puzzle to explore something else. “Fourth?”

  “You said maybe four thin threads.”

  “Oh. The fourth. Santero’s mangled hands and Santillanes’ teeth. They were broken out, I think. The pathologist said there was nothing wrong with the man’s gums.” He looked at Chee. “I think that’s what decides me. Santero is one of the Santillanes people. The FBI had this one right. Describe him to me again.”

  Chee described Bad Hands in detail.

  “What do you think we’re dealing with here?”

  “I’d guess a bomb,” Chee said.

  Leaphorn nodded. “Probably,” he said. “Plastic explosive in the mask, and someone there to detonate it when the general is in exactly the right place.”

  The elevator creaked to a halt at the ground floor.

  “I’ll get the mask,” Chee said. “You look for Santero.”

  Finding Santero proved to be no problem.

  They rushed out of the elevator, through the door into the museum’s main-floor public display halls and down the corridor toward the MASKED GODS OF THE AMERICAS banner—Chee leading, Leaphorn puffing along behind. Chee stopped.

  “There he is,” he said.

  Santero had his back to them. He was standing beside an exhibit of Toltec masks, watching the crowd, which was watching television crews at another exhibit. Bright lights flashed on—a television crew preparing for action.

  Chee turned his hurried walk into a run, dodging through the spectators, staggering a teenaged girl who backed into his path, being staggered in turn by a hefty woman whose shoulder grazed him as he passed. The Yeibichai itself had drawn only a few lookers. Curiosity about the television crews and the celebrity at the Incan display was the magnet but Chee had to push his way through the overflow to reach the exhibit. He was forcing himself not to think two terrible, unthinkable thoughts. He would reach the mask and there would be a bomb under it and Bad Hands would detonate it in his face. He would reach the mask and tear it off and there would be nothing under it. Only the molded plastic head of the manikin. In the first thought he would be instantly dead. In the second he would be hideously, unspeakably, terminally humiliated—living out his life as a public joke.

  “Hey!” he heard behind him. “Get away from that. What the hell are you doing!” A security guard was climbing over the railing.

  Chee jerked at the mask, tilting the manikin against him. He jerked again. The mask, the head, all of it came off in his arms. The headless manikin toppled with a crash. “Hey!” the guard shouted.

  Leroy Fleck had several terrible weaknesses and several terrible strengths. One of his strengths was in stalking his prey, attaining the exact place, the exact time, the exact position, for using his shank exactly as Eddy Elkins—and his own subsequent experience—had taught him to use it. The secret of Leroy Fleck’s survival had been finding a way to make his kill instant and silent. And Fleck had managed to survive seventeen years since his release from prison.

  He was stalking now. While he watched the crowd and waited for the moment, he slipped the shank out of his sleeve and an envelope out of his pocket. He put the shank in the envelope, and carried it in his right hand, deep in his right coat pocket where it would be ready. The envelope had been Elkins’ idea. “If witnesses see an envelope, they react like they’re seeing somebody handing somebody a letter. Same with the victim. But if people see a knife coming, it’s a totally different reaction.” That had been proved true. And the paper didn’t get in the way at all, or slow things down. With the handle of the shank ready between his thumb and forefinger, he watched The Client carefully, and the VIP, and the VIP’s muscleman, and the ambassador, and the rest of them. He concluded from the way the man moved, and the way he watched, that the still photographer was also the ambassador’s bodyguard. Partially on the basis of that he had changed his strategy. The VIP would go first. The Client second. The VIP was the one that mattered, the one who would best demonstrate that Leroy Fleck was a man, and not a dog that could be spit on without retribution.

  He could do it right now, he thought, but the situation was improving. It became clear to Fleck what was happening. The VIP had called some sort of press conference here at the Incan display. That brought in the television cameras, and TV crews attracted the curious. The bigger the crowd got, the better the odds for Fleck. It would multiply the confusion, improve his chances of getting two, and maybe even three.

  Then he saw Santero—the man who always wore gloves. It was clear to Fleck almost immediately that Santero was also stalking. Fleck watched. Santero seemed to have two objectives. He was keeping out of the line of vision of The Client, and he was keeping the VIP in sight. Fleck considered this. It didn’t seem to matter. Santero was no longer the enemy. The man had probably come here to try something. But if he did, it could only be helpful to Fleck. He could see no problem in that.

  Just as he had decided that, he saw the two Indian cops. They hurried into the exhibit hall together. Then the tall one broke into a run toward him, and the older one headed for Santero. Here Fleck could definitely see a problem. Both of these men had seen him, the older one clearly and in good light. No more time to wait for a bigger crowd. Fleck pushed his way past a man in a raincoat, past a television light technician, toward the VIP. The VIP was standing with a well-dressed fat man wearing bifocal glasses. They were studying a sheet of paper, discussing it. Probably, Fleck thought, they were looking at notes for the statement he intended to make. If he could handle it, Fleck decided he would take the VIP from the back. He slipped his right hand from his pocket, crumpling one end of the envelope as he gripped the shank handle. Then he moved
, Fleck fashion, like lightning.

  Leaphorn always thought things through, always planned, always minimized the opportunity for error. It was a lifelong habit, it was the source of his reputation as the man to handle impossible cases. Now he had only a few seconds to think and no time at all to plan. He would have to presume that there was a bomb, that Santero held the detonator, that Santero was working alone because only one person would be needed. Santero’s presence, lurking where he could watch the general, seemed to reinforce some of that thinking. The man was waiting until the general moved up to the position closest to the bomb. And the detonator? Probably something like the gadget that turned his television on and changed the channels. Grabbing him wouldn’t work. He’d be too strong and agile for Leaphorn to handle, even with surprise. He’d simply point the thing and push the button. Leaphorn would try confusion.

  Santero heard him rushing up and whirled to face him. His right hand was in his coat pocket, the arm rigid.

  “Señor Santero,” Leaphorn said, in a loud, hoarse, breathless whisper. “Venga conmigo! Venga! Pronto! Pronto! Venga!”

  Santero’s face was shocked, bloodless. The face of a man interrupted at the moment of mass murder.

  “Come with you?” he stammered. “Who are you?”

  “Los Santillanes sent me,” Leaphorn said. “Come. Hurry.”

  “But what—” Santero became aware that Leaphorn had gripped his right arm. He jerked it away, pulled out his right hand. He wore a black glove on it, and in the glove he held a small, flat plastic box. “Get away from me,” Santero said, voice fierce.

  There was a clamor of voices from the crowd. Someone was shouting: “Hey! You! Get out of there.” Santero turned from Leaphorn, backing away, starting at the sound of a second shout: “Hey! Get away from that.”

  Santero took another step backward. He raised the box.

  “Santero,” Leaphorn shouted. “El hombre ahí no esta el general. No esta El General Huerta Cardona. Es un—” Leaphorn’s Arizona-New Mexico Spanish included no Castilian noun for “stand-in” or even “substitute.”