Wall of Glass

by Walter Satterthwait

  “What do you mean?”

  She looked up at me, took a deep breath, and said, “Well, I shouldn’t be sayin’ this, probably, no proof of anything, but if Silvia was selling contraband kachinas, she coulda been selling other kinds of contraband, too.”

  “Like what?”

  “Artifacts. Ceremonials.”

  “How would they be contraband? All the dealers sold those, I thought.”

  “They’d be contraband if they were robbed from graves on federal land, and the Indian reservations are all on federal land. And in the past ten, fifteen years, people been robbing graves on the reservations like crazy. See, what happened is, back in nineteen seventy-one the Parke-Bernet Galleries in New York, they held the first big auction of American Indian art ever, and they got prices on some of the stuff, big money, that knocked the socks off a lotta people. Now once you got a market that’s ready for goods, you’re gonna find people who’ll supply the goods, and a lot of them aren’t gonna care where they get ’em.”

  “Looters.”

  “Looters, yeah. Things got so bad in the seventies, the guv’mint passed the Archeological Resource Protection Act in seventy-nine. Didn’t stop ’em, though. Prices keep going up—especially in Germany, like I say. Problem is, you got three agencies involved—National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, and the Forest Service—but all three of them put together don’t have enough people to keep these scumbags away from ceremonial gravesites. Too much area for them to cover. Too much money for the scumbags to make.”

  “What kind of money?”

  “Guy I know at B.L.M. figures twenty-five million a year in black-market sales.”

  I must’ve looked surprised, because she smiled sadly and said. “Yeah. Lotta people can’t believe it. You talk about gravesites and they figure you’re talkin’ arrowheads, maybe a feather or two. Well listen, last year in Munich, a single Hopi ceremonial basket went for a hunnerd and fifty thousand. One single solitary basket. And the scumbags don’t stick to baskets and bowls, neither. The Anasazi—that’s the Navajo name for the Old Ones, the Indians who lived here before the Navajo and the Hopi showed up—they used to mummify their dead. Men, women, children. What the scumbags are doin’ is diggin’ up the mummies of the dead children, and then castin’ ’em in acrylic blocks. Just the right size, see, for a mantelpiece. Look real good next to that lamp shade from Buchenwald. Real conversation piece. Germans are paying five to ten grand for one. I tell you, on a scale of ethics or morals, these guys, these looters, are a couple steps below maggot puke.”

  “What’d be the most valuable kind of contraband that Griego might’ve had access to?”

  “Be your Hopi and Anasazi stuff. Krauts like ’em both.”

  “What would she need to get it?”

  “All she’d need,” she said, “would be someone who knew where the stuff was, which’d be one of the Hopis, naturally, and then a couple of strong backs to dig it up.”

  A couple of strong backs. Killebrew and Biddle?

  “John Lucero,” I said. “He’s Hopi.”

  She nodded. “Sure is.”

  AFTER I LEFT Winnifred Gail’s gallery on West San Francisco street, I drove over to the house of Carla Chavez, Biddle’s girlfriend. She was home, and by now she’d gotten used to answering my questions. Yes, she said, when Frank had gone on hunting trips, Stacey Killebrew had gone along. Just the two of them? Yes. Had they ever actually bagged any deer? No. And where, exactly, had they gone hunting? Arizona. Where in Arizona? She wasn’t sure, she said, but she knew that it was somewhere on the Navajo Reservation.

  The Hopi Reservation is on the Navajo Reservation.

  When was the last time Biddle had gone hunting? Last year, in the spring. Did Killebrew go with him? Yes.

  I gave her another twenty before I left.

  Since it seemed to be a day for tying up loose ends, when I got back to my office I called Peter Ricard at his. The secretary put me through.

  Peter sounded tired, and I told him so.

  “Yeah,” he said. “A tough night. Some married lady I barely know showed up on my doorstep at two in the morning and told me she wanted to have an affair.”

  “Your reputation precedes you, Peter.”

  “I sat her down and explained to her, very rationally, that I don’t do married ladies. There are too many problems, moral, legal, and logistical. So she took off her blouse.”

  “Doesn’t sound like you were very persuasive.”

  “I’m only human.” He laughed. “The lady wasn’t Felice Leighton, was it?”

  “Felice? Jesus, no. Why Felice?”

  “It’s just that I remember you telling me you’d never been involved with Felice. And recently, I’ve been hearing about a party at Silvia Griego’s.”

  There was a moment’s pause. “Oh yeah?”

  “I saw a couple of interesting Polaroids. You photograph well, Peter.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, well, I don’t really count that, Josh.”

  “Count it? Like on a score card?”

  “Yeah, right. It was a group endeavor. Everyone was a little bit nuts. Sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. You know how those things work, Josh.”

  I said nothing.

  “She was a helluva girl, Silvia,” he said, the words coming out a shade too quickly. “A bitch, isn’t it, her dying like that. Is that what you’re calling about?”

  “No. Just trying to get the stories straight.”

  “Well, glad to help. Listen, Josh, I’ve gotta run. You going to the pool today?”

  “Probably.”

  “I’ll be over there at five. How about some racquetball?”

  “I don’t think so, Peter. Not today.”

  “Maybe next week.”

  “Maybe,” I said, but I didn’t think I’d be playing racquetball with Peter next week either.

  IT WAS DARK that night by seven-thirty, and by eight o’clock I was sitting in John Lucero’s unlit living room. The pile of hundreds was still in the fruitcake tin in the kitchen; I’d checked with a pencil flash when I came in.

  I knew that the money gave me no guarantee that Lucero would be back, tonight or any other night. He could have more cash stashed in a safe-deposit box somewhere. If he had a bank card, he could use one of the automatic teller machines scattered around town. But people who hide money away for emergencies tend to use it in emergencies, and, as I’d told Rita, it seemed to me that Lucero was smack in the middle of one.

  It seemed to me, I’d told her, that Lucero had taken Killebrew’s advice, or orders, and gone to ground. If he had, he wouldn’t want to be seen at all. Which meant the banks, and even the automatic tellers, were out.

  Rita hadn’t been over-enthusiastic about my plan. “If you’re right about him hiding,” she said, “he’s been doing it for a day or two now. He’s going to be jumpy.”

  “I won’t give him a chance to jump.”

  “Call me,” she said. “On the hour. Let the phone ring three times. I won’t answer it. But if I don’t hear from you, I’ll call Hector and ask him to send in the troops.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  So I called her at eight, let the phone ring three times, and hung up. I called her again at nine, and at ten and eleven and twelve. In between calls I just sat there. Sometimes I thought about Silvia Griego. Sometimes I thought about John Lucero, and wondered whether anything would’ve been different if I’d talked to him earlier this week. Phil, at the Lone Star, had told me he was a friend of Killebrew’s—I could’ve questioned him then about the necklace. And maybe Griego would still be alive.

  And then again, maybe she wouldn’t.

  At ten minutes after twelve, he showed up at the front door.

  HE MOVED VERY WELL. I didn’t notice anything, not a sound, until I heard the key slip into the lock. I picked the gun up from my lap with my right hand and reached with my left for the switch to the lamp beside me, on the end table.

  He came in, pushing the door quietly
shut behind him, then padding silently across the carpet. For a moment he was silhouetted against the pale moonlight spilling into the room from the front window. I pushed the light switch and the room lit up.

  He wheeled about, his long hair flying, his face twisted with fear.

  “Take it easy, John,” I told him.

  Still in a crouch, ready to spring, he glanced quickly around the room as though expecting someone else to be there. Killebrew, maybe. He looked as Phil had described him, tall and slender, with loose black hair that reached nearly to his waist. A red cotton windbreaker, a plaid flannel shirt, faded jeans, cowboy boots.

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “My name is Croft. I’m an investigator. Sit down.”

  His glance flicked toward the hallway to the kitchen, and I knew that he was measuring the distance, calculating the time it would take.

  I said, “No way, John. I could put a bullet in your leg before you got halfway there.” Assuming I could actually hit the leg.

  He straightened up and glared at me. Ready to brazen it out. “What the fuck you doin’ here?”

  “I want some information. Sit down and we’ll talk.”

  His eyes narrowed. “This is my house, man. You don’t fuckin’ tell me what to do in my own fuckin’ house.”

  I thumbed back the hammer of the .38.

  “Yeah?” he sneered. “You gonna shoot me, man? The neighbors hear that, cops’ll be all over the place.”

  I pulled the trigger. The slug went nowhere near him—I was aiming at the chair to his right—but the gun made a very satisfying boom in the enclosed space of the living room. Yet from the street, from the houses nearby, the shot probably wasn’t even audible.

  Lucero had jumped, his eyes wide. “Jesus Christ!” he shouted. “You’re fuckin’ crazy!”

  “Sit down, John.” My ears were still ringing, my voice sounded muffled.

  He swallowed, moved to the chair, looked at the small round hole in the upholstery. “Jesus Christ, man.”

  “Sit down,” I said.

  He sat down, hands between his thighs, eyes on my gun.

  “Here’s how it’s going to work,” I said. “First I’ll tell you what I know. And then you’ll tell me what you know. A fair trade. Got it?”

  He nodded, looking up from the gun. “Sure. Sure, man. Whatever.”

  “All right. First off, I know that you were using eagle feathers to make kachinas for Silvia Griego.”

  “Hey, that’s bullshit, man. I never—”

  “It’s not your turn, John.”

  “I never used no fuckin’ eagle feathers, man.”

  “Shut up and listen. I know that you helped Stacey Killebrew and Frank Biddle move illegal ceremonials from the Hopi reservation. I know they brought them to Silvia Griego.”

  He tried to frown, but it didn’t quite come off. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

  “I know that Griego sold the stuff to Leibman and Sons, in Munich. The same people who bought your kachinas.”

  “Hey, man—”

  “Now here’s the situation, John. The cops’ve got Griego’s financial records. Everything. They know about the sales to Liebman and Sons. They know about the numbered account in Switzerland. The I.R.S. is already involved, and pretty soon the rest of the Feds will be, too. The B.L.M., the Parks Service, Fish and Game, everybody, including the F.B.I. All someone has to do, all anyone has to do, is locate one of your kachinas over in Germany, just one of them, John, and you’re looking at five years in a federal penitentiary. That’ll give you plenty of time to talk to the feds about moving contraband goods off the Hopi Reservation. And plenty of time to talk to the I.R.S. about the four grand you’ve got stashed in the kitchen. And plenty of time to talk to the local cops about being an accessory to the murder of Silvia Griego.”

  He leaned quickly forward, nearly coming out of the chair. “Jesus Christ, man, I didn’t have anything to do with that!”

  “But you know who did.”

  He sat back, lips compressed, eyes narrowed and wary.

  “The only way out of this, John, that I can see, is your turning state’s evidence. You give yourself up, you give what you know. I’m no lawyer, but I’d guess you’d get a suspended sentence on the kachinas. The other charges would probably be dropped.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, man, sure. And that’ll do me a lot of good if I’m dead.”

  “Killebrew,” I said.

  “Hey, man, he’s crazy. I mean he’s fuckin’ nuts. Why d’you think I’m sneakin’ into my own house like this? And you think I like hiding out in my car all day?”

  “You can put Killebrew away,” I told him.

  “Yeah, sure. And then he gets out on bail and he comes by one night and he wastes me.” He pointed his finger like a gun. “Bang!”

  “The cops’ll protect you. And if they won’t, the Feds will.”

  He put his arms along the arm of the chair and shook his head as though trying to clear it. “Shit, man.”

  “Did Killebrew kill Silvia Griego?”

  He put his head back against the chair and rolled it slowly, left to right. “Shit,” he said, the word protracted into a single long sorrowful sigh.

  “Did he?”

  Looking up at the ceiling, he took a deep ragged breath. He let it slowly out. “Yeah,” he said, and his voice was flat, empty, emotionless. “He killed her.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  He did. It took him a while, but by one o’clock I had everything he knew. There were still some questions left unanswered, but I was convinced that Lucero didn’t know any more than he’d told me.

  Lucero was sitting slumped in the chair, drained and pale.

  I stood up and holstered the gun. “Come on, John,” I said. “Let’s go talk to the cops.”

  Wearily, he pushed himself up out of the chair. He stood for a minute, looking a little shaky on his feet.

  I blame myself for what happened. I knew, after all, that Killebrew was roaming around somewhere, and certainly I knew that he was capable of killing. Less than a week ago someone had shot at me through a window, and here I was, standing in another brightly lit room, in front of another window, with the only person who could tie Killebrew to Griego’s death.

  Simultaneously, or so it seemed, the window burst apart and John Lucero shrieked, spinning off to the right as blood sprayed through the air.

  EIGHTEEN

  I WENT FOR THE LAMP first, grabbing it with my left hand and wrenching it off the end table as I dove for the floor. The wire tautened, the plug popped from the outlet, the room went abruptly dark. I heard a loud flat crack come from outside and—once again, the two things seemed to happen simultaneously—a dull smack as the slug hammered into the floor. My hands were against the carpet now and I felt the vibration as it hit. It sounded like a hunting rifle out there, a big one.

  I got up onto my knees, tugged out the .38 and fired blindly out the window, not really hoping to hit anything, but trying to give Killebrew something to think about. Then I tucked in my shoulder and rolled across the room, toward where Lucero had gone down. A split second later, another slug ploughed into the floor, exactly where I’d been kneeling.

  My eyes hadn’t adjusted yet to the darkness, and the muzzle flash of the revolver had left a bright green afterimage. I had to feel around with my hands, slapping at the carpet before I found Lucero’s leg.

  Two more loud cracks from outside, two more slugs slamming into the floor. Lying on his back, Lucero was breathing, but he was out cold. Shock; the energy expended on impact by the slug from a hunting cartridge is vicious. His right arm flopped loosely inside the wind-breaker and the material was sopping wet. The bone had been shattered, an artery hit.

  I ripped off my belt, wrapped it around his arm above the wound, tied it. Tourniquets are tricky, tie them too tightly or leave them on too long and you kill body tissues. But at the moment the most important thing was stopping that blood.

&n
bsp; Another slug pounded into the floor, only a few feet away. How much longer could he keep that up before someone called the cops? I glanced at my watch. Ten after one. I hadn’t checked in with Rita. Had she phoned for help?

  I slipped the revolver into the holster and wrapped my arms around Lucero’s back. He groaned. Awkwardly, shuffling along on my knees, I tugged him across the carpet, toward the hallway to the kitchen, out of the line of fire.

  When I thought he was safe, I moved into a squat, my back against the wall. I took out the gun again and cocked it. I didn’t think he’d rush the house—he knew I was armed, and here inside, a handgun had the advantage over a rifle—but I was ready for him if he tried.

  And then I heard the sirens. Faint at first, and faraway, they grew louder and more strident as I listened. I think it was the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard.

  “GRIEGO WAS COMING APART,” I said. “Even before Biddle was killed. You remember that Valium prescription I found in her medicine chest?”

  Rita nodded. We were sitting out on her patio by the balustrade and the day was beautiful and warm, taut blue polished sky overhead, sunlight spilling down the hills around us and splashing across the town beneath. I had condescended to accept a glass of lemonade; the temperature was in the upper seventies. It was Friday, one week to the day since Frank Biddle had come to my office.

  Rita said, “How did it all start?” She was wearing a pale yellow blouse and a white skirt. At her neck a thin gold chain held a small golden cross that caught the light and sparkled just below the hollow of her throat.

  “Griego and Lucero started selling the eagle feather kachinas to Germany six years ago. They made a couple thousand dollars more on each kachina than they would’ve made if the kachinas hadn’t been made with the eagle feathers.”

  “Not a lot of money,” Rita said, “to risk a term in jail.”

  “Neither one of them saw it as much of a risk. Griego knew the people at Liebman and Sons, knew they’d take all the illegal kachinas she could send them. And like Winnifred Gail said, even if the packages had been opened at Customs, no one there would be able to tell whether the feathers were eagle or turkey or Red Red Robin. And, remember, Griego was apparently a little bit money crazy.”