Sacred Clowns jlajc-11

by Tony Hillerman

  Nothing to hope for except luck. And Lieutenant Leaphorn did not approve of luck. He thought about why Leaphorn, in the face of fairly solid evidence, didn't seem to believe that Eugene Ahkeah had killed Eric Dorsey, or anyone else. He thought about where he might look next for Delmar, his sneaky little problem. And about why the crowd had fallen silent when the clown's wagon appeared in the Tano plaza. If Leaphorn was interested how that crime connected with the Dorsey case, he would ask the right people at Tano and find out about that.

  Then, as his truck jolted higher into the summer pastures of the Chuskas, and ponderosa pine replaced juniper and piñon, and the air was colder in his nostrils and brought the old high-country smells back to him, he thought of Hosteen Nakai, the Little Father of his boyhood.

  Nobody was home at the summer shack of Hosteen Nakai. Chee found Nakai's mixed flock of sheep and goats in a meadow a mile away, and his uncle sitting on a rotted log with his horse grazing under the aspens. A ghetto blaster sat on the log beside him, apparently tuned to KNDN. From it came the impassioned voice of D. J. Nez singing, "My heroes have always been Indians."

  "Dichin Dine'e," said Hosteen Nakai. "That would have been way back, a long time ago when we got mixed up with them. Let me think about that a little bit." While he thought he extracted a package of cigarette papers and a sack of Bull Durham from the pocket of his shirt, offered both to Chee, and made himself a cigarette. "It would have been back when the army made us prisoners and herded us off to Bosque Redondo. Back when we made the Long Walk. Everybody got mixed together then and there was some marrying back and forth. Even some marrying with the Apaches. They had a bunch of Mescalero Apaches penned up there with us."

  He lit the cigarette. Exhaled. "Why you interested in the Hunger People? It sounds to me like you finally found yourself a Navajo girl."

  Chee nodded.

  Nakai said, "I don't know. Her father's mother was born to the Dichin Dine'e, you think. But what's her father's clan? What's the rest of the family connections?"

  "She doesn't have a 'born to' clan," Chee said. "Her mother is a white woman. Her dad's a Navajo. But they're one of those relocation families. The government moved his family off the reservation in the 1940s. He was just a kid when it happened and I guess his family raised him white. He thinks his mother was Dichin Dine'e. Says he doesn't know about his father's clan."

  Hosteen Nakai considered this, exhaled a cloud of blue smoke, muttered some imprecation under his breath.

  "Tell me about this woman," he said. "And tell me about yourself. Tell me about the work you are doing."

  Chee told Hosteen Nakai about Janet Pete, the city Navajo. And he told him about the driver who had hit the old man walking beside Navajo Route 1 and left the man to die beside the highway. Could Hosteen Nakai spread the word about this man among the small fraternity of medicine people? Nakai said he would. Chee told him about the deaths of the Christian at Thoreau and the koshare at Tano, and how nobody seemed to know why either one had died, and about his frustrating hunt for Delmar Kanitewa.

  Nakai asked questions, about the Christian, about the koshare, about the grandmother of Delmar, about the package Delmar had carried.

  Five goats had separated themselves from the flock and drifted downslope. Nakai whistled to his dogs, resting in the tall grass beside the aspens. He pointed. The dogs raced down the slope, circled, brought the reluctant goats back to the fold. The autumn sun was low enough now to begin giving shape to rolling plains far below them. Chee could make out the dark line of shadows cast by Chaco Mesa forty miles to the east. North of that, the yellow-tan of the grama grass prairie was marked by spots of darkness and color—the slate erosion of the Bisti Badlands and the De-Na-Zin Wilderness. Beautiful. Peaceful. But Chee was nervous. Pretty soon Hosteen Nakai would be finished thinking and be ready to talk. For the first time Chee noticed that his uncle had become an old man. Now, what would he say?

  "The man who hit the old man, and left him to die," Nakai said. "I will ask the right people.

  You are right, if he is following the Beauty Way of the Navajos he would want to be cured of that. But why do you want to find him? What good does it do for the man he killed?

  What good does it do him? I think you would put him in jail. That won't help him." Nakai shrugged, dismissing it. He allowed the silence to take over, giving Chee time to frame his response. Chee simply nodded.

  "The Christian and the koshare. Two good men, you tell me. Valuable men. But somebody killed them. Usually the people who get killed like this have worked at it themselves." He puffed on the cigarette, exhaled. "You know what I mean. They fooled with somebody's wife. They got drunk and hit somebody. They butchered somebody's cow. Did something wrong, usually. They got out of harmony with everything so somebody might kill them. But not this time, you tell me. Two good men who helped people, hurt nobody. And they were a lot alike in other ways. The koshare, you know about them. I used to know a Hopi man who was a koshare at Moenkopi. He would say to me: 'Compared to what our Creator wanted us to be, all men are clowns. And that's what we koshare do. We act funny to remind the people. To make the people laugh at themselves. We are the sacred clowns,'

  he said. He is dead now, a long time, but I remember that. And now you have told me that this teacher at Thoreau was funny, too. A good man and he made the children laugh."

  Hosteen Nakai tapped the ash from his cigarette and looked at Chee, thoughtfully. As if wondering whether Chee could extract any meaning from this. Chee gave no sign that he had.

  "Two good men who made fun and helped people. Valuable men. But somebody killed them. There has to be a reason. Everything is connected. So you have to look for something outside of them. Something evil that somehow both of them touched. If you find the driver who killed the man, you do nothing for anybody. But if you find out why it was that these valuable men were killed, you do good work then."

  Nakai pushed himself up from the log, stretched, looked down at Chee. "But you want to hear about the woman. That's why you came here. The incest taboo. You know about it.

  How it makes you sick, makes you crazy. How it hurts your family. Gets everything out of harmony. So be careful about that woman for a while." He took another drag on the cigarette.

  "I know an old man who lives over near Crystal. That's where the Hunger People used to be a long time ago before the army moved them to Bosque Redondo. He's a hataalii. He sings the Mountain Top Way, and the Red Ant Way, and some of the other cures. I will talk to him about this woman. I think he will know something about the Hunger People and our Slow Talking Clan. When I know, then I will tell you."

  "How long will—"

  "Young men are impatient when they see the woman they want," Nakai said. "I know that.

  I will start tonight."

  "Thank you," Chee said.

  "One more thing. This boy you are looking for. You think he is running away because he is afraid. Does his grandmother still call the lieutenant to ask about him?"

  "Ah," Chee said. Why hadn't he thought of that? "No. Not for several days."

  "Then the grandmother knows where to find him," Nakai said. He exhaled smoke and stood looking into the blue cloud hanging in the still air. "And she also knows, I think, that the boy has some reason to be afraid."

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  13

  THE VERY FIRST thing Jim Chee intended to do when he reached his office the next morning was call Tribal Councilwoman Bertha Roanhorse. The memos Virginia had left on his blotter asked him to return calls from Lieutenant Toddy at Crownpoint and Captain Largo at Tuba City. They could wait. So could the manila envelope Virginia had dropped in his in-basket. As it turned out, so could Jim Chee. The Navajo Communications Company telephone book listed a Roanhorse number among the nineteen telephones served by the Toadlena exchange, but a stern feminine voice on an answering machine instructed Chee to leave a message. He did. Then he called the Legislative Secret
ary's Office. Another blank. None of the Tribal Council committees on which Mrs. Roanhorse served was meeting today. He left another message. Next, he called the Navajo Nation Inn. Yes, Councilwoman Roanhorse was registered. She didn't answer the room phone. Chee left a third message.

  Having exhausted all possibilities he could think of, he returned the call to Captain Largo.

  Largo was out, but the Tuba City dispatcher had a message for him: "Tell Chee we have drawn a blank on front end repairs here in his hit-run case."

  He called for Lieutenant Toddy at Crownpoint. The lieutenant was in. "I just wanted you to know we didn't forget you guys in the Navajo Nation's Capital City," Toddy said. "We haven't forgotten, but if your vehicular homicide suspect was somebody around here nobody seems to know about it."

  So much for that. The day was off to a bad start. He'd call Blizzard and tell him that he'd deduced that Councilwoman Roanhorse was hiding Delmar. That should impress Blizzard.

  But naturally Blizzard wasn't in. Chee took the manila envelope out of the in-basket. He'd see what Virginia had left for him.

  The envelope had FOR OFFICER CHEE printed across it in big letters, but nothing else.

  He tore it open and poured out an audiotape cassette. He turned it over. Nothing on either side to suggest what it held. He dialed Virginia to ask her who had left it. Virginia wasn't at her desk. The radio on the shelf behind Lieutenant Leaphorn's desk included a tape player. He'd borrow that.

  But the lieutenant, like Virginia, and Blizzard, and Roanhorse, was not in. Chee left the door open behind him, turned on the radio, and slipped in the tape.

  It produced the buzzes and clicks characteristic of amateur taping, then ringing sounds, and then a voice saying, "You have reached the office of Councilman Jimmy Chester. I can't come to the phone now but leave a message after the beep and I'll call you back." A brief silence followed, then a beep, and then a second voice:

  "Jimmy, this is Ed Zeck. If you're there pick it up. I need to talk to you. Otherwise, call me down at the motor inn. It's room 217 and I'll be there until—"

  "I'm here, Ed. What do you need?"

  "I need your opinion. I hear some things that worry me."

  "Like what?"

  "Like maybe the American Indian Movement is going to mix into this. You hear that?"

  "Forget it. AIM doesn't amount to anything out here. They're city Indians. Besides, far as Navajos are concerned, they always get on the wrong side of the argument."

  Chee stopped the tape. What the devil was this? Obviously, a telephone conversation. He recognized the scratchy voice of Zeck. Presumably the man responding to Jimmy Chester's answering machine was, as advertised, Jimmy Chester. But should he be eavesdropping? And who had sent him this? The Nature First guy? What was his name?

  Applebee.

  On Leaphorn's telephone, he buzzed Virginia's desk. Now she was there.

  "What package?" Virginia asked.

  "Actually, a manila envelope."

  "Not me," Virginia said. "Somebody must have just dropped it on your desk. None of you guys ever lock a door or anything. You don't even close them, half the time. You think nobody steals from you because you're policemen. Well, I'll tell you what. People walk right in here and steal your purse off your chair. Steal your jacket. I had that happen. I've been telling the chief for years he should have a rule about keeping the doors locked.

  When you're out. Or at least closing them." Virginia paused for a breath, giving Chee an opportunity.

  "It makes everything more efficient," Chee said, wondering why he was arguing about this.

  "When you need to talk to someone, you can look in and see if he's there, or if he's busy.

  That's the way they did it at Crownpoint, too. When I was stationed there. And that's the way it was at Tuba City."

  "Well, don't blame me, then," Virginia said, thereby ending the conversation and leaving Chee staring at Joe Leaphorn's radio.

  Maybe the tape itself would tell him who had brought it. He pushed the PLAY button. The memo he'd written for Leaphorn yesterday was still .in the lieutenant's in-basket. Maybe Leaphorn was out working the Eric Dorsey case, or another crime of some importance. Or maybe he had assigned himself a drive over to Flagstaff. According to the department scuttlebutt, he was supposed to have something going with a woman professor over there.

  The tape stopped whirring, clicked, and abruptly began speaking in a rumbling male voice with a West Texas accent.

  "—what I hear. But I'll take your word for it. The other thing. You have any push with the people at the Navajo Times'?"

  "Not much. I know the reporter who covers council meetings. He interviewed me last month. That's about it."

  "I didn't want to get a big argument going in the press about the dump. Silence is golden sometimes. Especially when you're dealing with tree huggers. But the paper started running letters bitching about the project. They had one in there from a tribal cop. You think we should react? You know, see if we can put a stop to getting politics mixed in with the Tribal Police. Lot of people would feel strongly about that, Jimmy."

  "No," Chester said.

  "Just hope for the best, you mean? Hope nothing gets stirred up."

  "Yes," Chester said. "Let's talk about my money."

  The speakers emitted the tinny sound of Zeck's laughter. "The check's in the mail," he said. "Just like I keep telling you."

  "I'm not laughing," Chester said. "The bank's not laughing. I've got to pay off that note.

  Remember, it was me that signed the paper."

  For a moment the only sound was the tape running.

  "All right then," Zeck said. "Twenty-two thousand something. I'll have to do some transferring around. Tell 'em you'll have it for 'em Monday."

  "And none of this 'check in the mail' crap," Chester said.

  "I'll make it a cashier's check," Zeck said.

  "And what do you hear from Tano?"

  "Nothing much. I think we're all right there. Bert Penitewa's for it. He's a popular man there and Tano pretty well does what the governor wants. It's not split like your Navajo council.

  There, the governor's also the big man in one of the religious kivas."

  "I know," Chester said.

  "We should just leave that alone then, you think? Anything else going on I ought to know about?"

  "Nothing," Chester said. "You go on down and get that money transferred. And it's not twenty-two thousand something. It's twenty-two thousand five hundred and thirty. Maybe those banks don't charge anything to loan money to you bilagaana guys, but us Navajos have to pay interest. Twenty-two thousand five hundred and thirty."

  "And some-odd cents, which we'll round off. So yaa' eh't'eeh for now."

  There was a click, and then only the sound of the tape running.

  Chee let it run until it shut itself off. Then he rewound it, replayed the conversation, and rewound it again. He had decided where it must have come from. Who else but Roger Applebee? The environmentalist had said he knew a way to get some evidence proving Jimmy Chester was corrupt. And he had gotten it. Probably with an illegal wiretap.

  Actually, not a wiretap these days. More likely one of those gadgets that pick up mobile telephone conversations. He'd seen one in an electronics supply store in Farmington. But still, the tape wouldn't be usable in court or even before a grand jury. If it was illegal, and it probably was, how could it be used?

  He was thinking about that when the telephone rang.

  "Joe Leaphorn's office."

  "Joe? Is Jim Chee still working on that hit-and-run vehicular homicide case?" It was the voice of the Window Rock dispatcher. "The one where—"

  "This is Chee," Chee said. "The lieutenant's away from his office."

  "Hey, man. You lucked out. Your suspect just confessed. Right over the radio."

  "Confessed? What d'ya mean?"

  "He drove up to KNDN in Farmington, and walked in where they have that open mike for the public to make announcements on, an
d he said he did it, and he was sorry, and he was going to make restitution. He said he was drunk. Said he didn't know he'd hit the man."

  "Who was it?"

  "We haven't got him yet. He walked out and drove away."

  "Wonderful," Chee said. "Didn't they call the cops? The people at the station?"

  "I guess so. Everybody's looking for him. Farmington police, New Mexico state cops, San Juan Sheriffs Department. Our people at Shiprock. Everybody."

  "Well," Chee said. "I guess I'll go join 'em." It was three hours over the mountain to Farmington, but the hit-and-run was his baby. Jimmy Chester would have to wait.

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  14

  "WHERE ALL did you look?" Dilly Streib asked. He was standing in the door of the Saint Bonaventure School shop, looking across the clutter.