The Ghostway jlajc-6

by Tony Hillerman

  Berger looked down at his hands, gripping the metal frame of the walker. He shook his head.

  "We don't know why anyone would have wanted to kill Gorman," Chee said. "Doesn't seem to be any reason for it. Did Gorman tell you anything that would help?"

  Berger's white head rose. He looked at Chee, drew a deep and careful breath, closed his eyes, concentrated.

  "Man came," he said.

  Chee waited.

  Berger struggled, gave up. "Shit," Berger said.

  "Would it help if I fill in the gaps? I'm going to guess at some of it. And if I'm wrong you shake your head and I'll stop. Or I'll try another guess."

  Berger nodded.

  "A man came to see Gorman, here at the apartment."

  Berger nodded.

  "The day before Gorman left for New Mexico?"

  Berger took his hands from the walker, held them about a foot apart, moved them together.

  "Less than that," Chee said. "The night before Gorman left."

  Berger nodded.

  "You saw him?"

  Berger nodded. He pointed to Gorman's apartment. Then indicated height and breadth.

  "A big man," Chee said. "Very big?"

  Berger agreed.

  "How old?"

  Berger struggled with that. Chee held up his hands, flashed ten fingers, another ten, stopped. Berger signaled thirty, hesitated, added ten.

  "Maybe forty," Chee said. "Another Navajo?"

  Berger canceled that, pointing to his own hair.

  "White," Chee said. "Blond?"

  Berger nodded.

  "A big blond man came here just before Gorman left for New Mexico," Chee said. Lerner, he was thinking, was neither big nor blond. "Had you seen him before?"

  Berger had.

  "Often?"

  Berger held up two fingers.

  "They talked?" Chee had begun wondering where this was taking him. What could Berger know that would be useful?

  Berger had taken his hands from the walker. His fingers, twisted and trembling, became two men standing slightly apart. Wagging fingers indicated one man talking, then the other man talking. Then the two hands moved together, parallel, to Berger's left. He stopped them. His lips struggled with an impossible word. "Car," he said.

  "They walked together to a car after talking. The blond man's car?"

  Berger nodded, pleased. His hands resumed their walk, stopped. Suddenly the right hand attacked the left, snatched it, bent it. Berger looked at Chee, awaiting the question.

  Chee frowned. "The blond man attacked Gorman?"

  Berger denied it.

  "Gorman attacked the blond man?"

  Berger agreed. He struggled for words, excited.

  Chee bit back a question. "Interesting," he said, smiling at Berger, giving him time. He had an idea. He tapped Berger's right hand. "This is Blond," he said, "and the left hand is Gorman. Okay?"

  Berger grasped his right hand with his left, began to enact a struggle. Then he stopped, thinking. He grasped an imaginary doorknob, opened the imaginary door, watching to see if Chee was with him.

  "One of them opened the car door? The blond?"

  Berger agreed. He held his left hand with his right, released it, then pantomimed, fiercely, the slamming of the door. He clutched the injured finger, squirming and grimacing in mock pain.

  "Gorman slammed the door on the blond man's finger," Chee said. Berger nodded. He was a dignified man, and all this play-acting was embarrassing for him. "That would suggest that Gorman wasn't going to the car willingly. Right? You were standing about here, watching?" Chee laughed. "And wondering what the hell was going on, I'll bet."

  "Exactly," Berger said, clearly and distinctly. "Then Gorman ran." He motioned past the fence, up the alley, a gesture that caused Gorman to vanish.

  "And the blond man?"

  "Sat," Berger said. "Just a min…" He couldn't finish the word.

  "And then I guess he drove away."

  Berger nodded.

  "You have any idea about all this?"

  Berger nodded affirmatively. They looked at each other, stymied.

  "Any luck writing?" Chee asked.

  Berger held up his hands. They trembled. Berger controlled them. They trembled again.

  "Well," Chee said, "we'll figure out a way."

  "He came," Berger said, pointing to the gravel where Chee was standing. "Talked."

  "Gorman. About the trouble he was in."

  Berger tried to speak. Tried again. Hit the walker fiercely with a palsied fist. "Shit," he said.

  "What did Gorman do for a living?"

  "Stole cars," Berger said.

  That surprised Chee. Why would Gorman tell Berger that? But why not? A new dimension of Albert Gorman opened. One lonely man meeting another beside a fence. Berger's potential importance in this affair clicked upward. Frail, bony, pale, he leaned on the walker frame, trying to form another word, his blue eyes intense with the concentration.

  Chee waited. The woman whose son was coming to see her had posted her wheelchair down the fence. Now she rolled it across the parched, hard-packed lawn toward them. She noticed Chee watching her and turned the wheelchair abruptly into the fence. "He's coming," she said to no one in particular.

  "Gorman stole cars," Chee said. "And the man he stole them for—the man who paid him—got indicted by the federal grand jury. Maybe the reason he went to New Mexico, and the reason somebody followed to shoot him, was because he was going to be a witness against his boss. Maybe the boss…"

  But Berger was denying that, shaking his head.

  "You don't think so?"

  Berger didn't. Emphatically.

  "He talked to you about that, then?"

  Berger agreed. Waved that subject off. Tried to form a word. "Not go," he managed finally. His mouth worked to say more, but couldn't. "Shit," he said.

  "Not go?" Chee repeated. He didn't understand that.

  Berger was still trying to find words. He couldn't. He shrugged, slumped, looked ashamed.

  "He showed him a picture." The words came from the woman in the wheelchair. She was looking out through the fence, and Chee didn't realize that the statement had anything to do with Berger until he saw the old man was nodding eagerly.

  "Gorman showed Mr. Berger a picture?" he asked.

  "That Indian showed that fella you're talking to there a picture," the woman said. She pointed at Berger. "Like a postcard."

  "Ah," Chee said. The photograph again. Why was it so important? It didn't surprise him to see the woman's senility fall away. It would come again just as quickly. Chee had grown up surrounded by the old of his family, learning from them, watching them grow wise, and ill, and die. This end of the human existence had no more mystery for him than its beginning.

  "Picture," Berger said. "His brother."

  "Was it a picture of an aluminum trailer with a man standing by it?"

  It was.

  "And Gorman said it was from his brother?"

  Berger nodded again.

  "I don't know what you meant when you said 'Not go.' I'm confused because we know Gorman went. Was it that Gorman had decided not to go and then changed his mind?"

  Berger denied it, emphatically. He recast his palsied hands in the roles of Gorman and the blond man. The hand representing Gorman dipped its fingertip affirmatively. The hand representing the blond man shook its fingertip negatively.

  "I see," Chee said. "Gorman wanted to go. The blond man said not to." He glanced at Berger, who was agreeing. "So Gorman was going, the blond man tried to stop him, they fought, and Gorman went. Good a guess as any?"

  Berger shrugged, unhappy with that interpretation. He pointed to the dial of his watch.

  "Time?" Chee was puzzled.

  Berger tapped the dial, pointing to where the hour hand was. Then he moved his finger around the dial, counterclockwise.

  "Earlier?" Chee asked.

  Berger nodded.

  "You mean this happened earlier? This business abo
ut Gorman wanting to go and the blond man telling him not to?"

  Berger was nodding vigorously.

  "Before the fight? Before the evening Gorman hurt Blond Man's hand? A day before? Two days?"

  Berger was nodding through all this. Two days before was correct. "And Gorman told you about that?"

  "Right," Berger said.

  "Do you know why Gorman wanted to go?"

  "Worried," Berger said. He tried to say more, failed, shrugged it off.

  The red-faced young man Chee had noticed earlier was slouching across the lawn toward them, whistling between his teeth. The woman spun her wheelchair and hurried it down the fence away from him. "Mean old bitch," the young man said, and hurried after her.

  "Do you know what was written on the postcard? The one with the picture on it?"

  Berger didn't.

  "The woman said it was like a postcard," Chee said. "Was it?"

  Berger looked puzzled.

  "Did it have a stamp on it?"

  Berger thought, closed his eyes, frowning. Then he shrugged.

  "She was a very observant woman," Chee said. "I wonder if either one of you happened to see a Navajo girl show up at Gorman's apartment yesterday. Little. Skinny teenager, wearing a navy pea coat. You see her?"

  Berger hadn't. He looked after the woman, wheeling furiously across the grass with the red-faced man hurrying after her. "Smart," he said. "Sometimes."

  "I had an aunt like that," Chee said. "Actually my mother's aunt. When she could remember she was very, very smart. Yesterday our friend couldn't remember anything."

  "Excited," Berger said. He tried to explain. Failed. Stopped. Stared down at his feet. When he looked up again, he was excited. And he had a plan.

  "War," he said. He held up two fingers.

  Chee thought about that. "World War Two," he guessed.

  "Son," Berger said. He tried to go on and failed.

  "In the war," Chee said.

  Berger nodded. "Navy."

  "He was killed," Chee guessed.

  Berger shook that off. "Big shot," he said. "Rich." That exhausted Berger's supply of words. His mouth twisted. His face turned pink. He pounded at the walker.

  The red-faced young man had caught the woman's wheelchair and was pushing her toward the porch. She sat, eyes closed, face blank. So her son was rich and important, Chee thought. What was Berger trying to tell him with that. Her son had been in the navy forty years ago, now he was rich and important, and that was related to something causing her to be excited yesterday.

  "Hey!" Chee shouted, suddenly understanding. "Yesterday. Yesterday morning she saw a sailor, is that it?"

  Berger nodded, delighted at the breakthrough.

  "Maybe she saw a sailor," Chee told Berger. "Maybe she saw Margaret Sosi in her pea jacket. What's that woman's name?"

  Berger got it out the first try. "Ellis."

  "Mrs. Ellis," Chee shouted. "Did you see a sailor yesterday? At the apartments?"

  "I saw him," Mrs. Ellis said.

  "He looked like your son. In a blue pea coat?"

  "I don't have a son," Mrs. Ellis said.

  Chapter 15

  The man mcnair called henry brought Vaggan his water in a crystal glass. Vaggan had said, "No ice, please," but the man named Henry hadn't listened, or hadn't cared. Henry's expression had suggested that he found bringing Vaggan a glass of water distasteful. He was a plump, soft man, with a soft voice and shrewd eyes that he allowed to give him an expression of haughty contempt. Vaggan placed the glass on the coffee table, aware of the two ice cubes floating in it but not looking at it.

  "You're a day late," McNair said. "I called you yesterday morning, and I said there was a hurry for this." McNair opened a black onyx box on his desk, extracted a cigaret, and tapped it against his thumbnail. "I don't like people who work for me to be late."

  Vaggan was feeling fine. He'd gotten home from the Leonard business before dawn, showered, done his relaxing exercises, and slept for six hours. Then he'd exercised again, weighed, and had a breakfast of wheat germ, alfalfa sprouts, and cheese while he watched the noon TV news. The NBC channel had led with Leonard being rushed through the emergency room doors and propelled away with one bloody ear visible. He switched quickly to ABC-TV and caught the tag end of his own voice, recorded from his final telephone call, explaining about the welshed debt. The Man could hardly ask more. Perfect. He'd switched off the set then and called the McNair number. He'd told the man who answered—probably Henry—to tell McNair he'd be there at 2 p.m.

  It was an easy hour's drive. He killed the remaining time reading through his new copies of Survival and Soldier of Fortune. He clipped out an article on common medicinal herbs of the Pacific Coast and circled an advertisement of Freedom Arsenal offering an FN-LAR assault rifle for $1,795. He'd looked at an FN in a Pasadena sporting goods store—the same model built by Fabrique National in Belgium for NATO paratroops. He'd been impressed, but the price there had been $2,300, plus California sales tax. With the Leonard money, he could afford either price, but most of that money would have to go to the contractor to finish the concrete work on his storage bunker, and he also wanted to install a solar generator and add to his stock of ammunition. However, there'd be more money coming in from McNair. Vaggan felt fine.

  He left at 1 p.m., giving himself a bit more time than he needed to drive into the Flinthills district, where the McNair family had bought itself a hill and built itself an estate and raised its offspring. And now he sat in the McNair office, or study, or library, or whatever such rooms were called in such houses, and here across the desk was McNair himself. McNair interested him. Very few men did.

  "I am never late," Vaggan said. "Maybe Henry didn't tell you." He glanced over his shoulder at Henry, who was standing stiffly beside the doorway. "Henry," he said. "Come here."

  Henry hesitated, looking past Vaggan at McNair. But he came.

  "Here," Vaggan said. He extracted the two ice cubes from the glass and held them out to Henry. "You can have these," he said. "I said no ice."

  Henry's face flushed. He took the cubes and stalked out of the room.

  Vaggan took out his handkerchief and dried his fingers.

  "Hard to get reliable help," he said to McNair.

  McNair had understood the subtlety of the point Vaggan was making, appreciating how the threat had been made without ever being spoken. He made a wry face and nodded.

  "Henry," he called.

  Henry reappeared at the door.

  "Bring Mr. Vaggan a glass of water, please."

  "Yes, sir," Henry said.

  "So what needs doing?" Vaggan said.

  "More Navajo business," McNair said. He had a heavy, rawboned face, pale and marked with the liver marks common with lightly pigmented people when they age. His eyes were an odd color, something near green, sunken under heavy, bristling gray brows. His expression was sour. "More trouble from the Gorman screw-up," he added. "A young woman named"—McNair looked down at a note pad on his desk—"named Margaret Sosi came to Los Angeles from Shiprock. She had a photograph of Leroy Gorman, and she came to Albert's place in West Hollywood looking for him. I want you to find her."

  "Just find her," Vaggan said.

  McNair grinned, more or less, showing white, even teeth. Henry had not had even teeth. It seemed to Vaggan that it was one of the few remaining signs left in America of social position versus family poverty. Rich people could afford orthodontists.

  "I don't get involved with what happens after you find her. Just make sure she doesn't make any trouble." He lit the cigaret with a silver lighter extracted from the end of the onyx box. "Absolutely sure. I do not want her talking to anybody."

  He exhaled a cloud of smoke.

  "And I want that picture. I want it brought to me, personally. I want an end to it."

  Vaggan said nothing. A map of Scotland printed on something that looked like parchment dominated the wall behind McNair. Its borders were decorated by patches of plaid which Vagga
n presumed were the tartans of the Scottish clans. A bagpipe and a heavy belt holding a scabbarded sword hung beside it. A claymore, Vaggan thought. Wasn't that the Scottish name for it? Down the wall were photographs. People in kilts. People in fox-hunting coats. A photograph of Queen Elizabeth II, an autograph scrawled across the bottom.

  "Here's her description," McNair said. He held out a sheet of typing paper.

  "I hope you have a little more than that," Vaggan said. "If you want her found this year."

  "I have an address."

  "Addresses help," Vaggan said.

  "If she's still there," McNair said. "It was yesterday morning when I called you."

  "Maybe we'll be lucky," Vaggan said. "Anyway, it's a place to pick up the trail."

  McNair was holding the typing paper, folded, between his fingers, tapping the edge of the fold against the desk, looking at Vaggan.

  "How'll you do it?"

  "What? Find her?"

  "Kill her."

  Henry had replaced the water with another crystal glass and disappeared. No ice cubes. Vaggan sipped, looking over the rim of the glass at McNair. He was thinking of tape recordings, but he could think of nothing McNair could gain by taping this conversation. Still, it was an odd question. Vaggan answered with a shrug and put down the glass. McNair interested him more and more. But the job was suddenly less appealing. Such things should be strictly business. No pleasure mixed in.

  "I would have thought you'd have a favorite method," McNair said. His expression was bland, but the greenish eyes in their deep sockets were avid.

  It should be purely business, Vaggan thought. Otherwise things get too complicated. Hard to calculate, which made them needlessly risky.

  Did he need this job? Did he still want to work for McNair?

  "If I did your work, I'd have a favorite method," McNair repeated.

  Vaggan shrugged again, took another sip of the tepid tap water. Outside, the McNair lawn sloped away toward the Pacific. The glass was like green velvet.

  "I can't see how you're going to get off," Vaggan said. "From what the story in the L.A. Times had to say, you're indicted on eleven counts, witnesses tying you into the business personally, everything neat and tidy the way it sounded. Why don't you jump bail, cash in a little of this"—he gestured around him at the room—"and make a run for it?" He sipped again. "Actually, there wouldn't have to be any actual running. Just transfer some cash to wherever and get some papers and fly away. Easy. No worry. No risk."