Tony Hillerman - Leaphorn & Chee 09 - Talking God

by Talking God(lit)

  There was another problem. He had to give some thought to that cowboy who'd walked over to his car last night and tapped at the window. What the hell did that mean? The guy looked like an Indian, and he was with that Indian woman who'd been visiting Highhawk. But what did it mean to Fleck? Fleck smelled cop. He sensed danger. There was more going down here than he knew about. That worried him. He needed to know more, and he intended to.

  Fleck pulled into the Dunkin' Donuts parking area. He was a little early but he noticed that the Ford sedan with the telephone company symbol was already parked. His man was on a stool, the only customer in the place, eating something with a fork. Fleck took the stool next to him.

  "You got it?" Fleck asked.

  "Sure. You got fifty?"

  Fleck handed the man two twenties and a ten and received a folded sheet of paper. He felt foolish as he did it. If he was smart, he could probably have found a way to get this information free without paying this creep in the telephone company. Maybe it was even in the library. He unfolded the paper. It was a section torn from a Washington Convention and Visitors Bureau map of the District of Columbia.

  "I circled the area where they use the 266 prefix," the man said. "And the little x marks are where the public phone booths are."

  Only a few x's, Fleck noticed. Less than twenty. He commented on it.

  "It's mostly a residential district," the man explained, "and part of the embassy row. Not much business for pay phones out there. You want a doughnut?"

  "No time," Fleck said, getting up.

  "Haven't heard much from you lately," the man said. "You going out of business?"

  "I'm in a little different line of work right now," Fleck said, walking toward the door. He stopped. "Would you happen to know of any good nursing homes? Where they take good care of old people?"

  "Don't know nothing about 'em," the man said.

  Fleck hurried, even though he had until two P.M. He started on Sixteenth Street, because that's where the countries without enough money to build on Massachusetts Avenue mostly located their embassies. None of the numbers matched there, although he found two booths with 266 numbers The Client had used earlier. He moved to Seventeenth Street and then Eighteenth. It was there he found the number he was scheduled to call at two P.M. Fleck backed out of the booth and looked up and down the street. No other pay booths in sight. He'd have to rent the car equipped with a mobile telephone. He'd reserved one at Hertz last night, just in case it worked out this way.

  Fleck spent the next two hours driving out to Silver Spring and checking on a rest home he'd heard about out there. It was a little cheaper but the linoleum on the floors was cracked and streaked with grime and the windows hadn't been washed and the woman who ran the place had a mean-looking mouth. He picked up the rent-a-car a little after one, a black Lincoln town car which was too big and too showy for Fleck's taste but which would look natural enough in Washington. He made sure the telephone worked, put his Polaroid camera on the front seat beside him, and drove back to Eighteenth Street. He parked across the street and a little down the block from the phone booth, called it, left his receiver open, and walked down the sidewalk far enough to hear the ringing in the booth. Then he sat behind the wheel, slumped down to be less visible. He waited. While he waited, he thought.

  First he went over his plan for this telephone call. Then he thought about the cowboy walking across the street and rapping at his window. If he was an Indian-and he looked like one-it might tie back to the killing. He'd left the train at the little town in New Mexico. Gallup, it was. Indians everywhere you looked. Probably they even had Indian cops and maybe one of them was looking into it. If that was true it meant they had tracked him back to Washington and somehow or other tied something together with that silly-looking bastard who wore his hair in a bun. That meant they must know a hell of a lot more about what Fleck was involved with than Fleck knew himself.

  That thought made him uneasy. He shifted in the seat and looked out the window at the weather, getting his mind off what would happen to him if the police ever had him in custody, with his fingerprints matched and making the circuit. If it ever got that far, he could kiss his ass good-bye. He could never, ever let that happen. What would Mama do if it did?

  If he could only find someplace where her always getting even didn't get Mama into trouble. She was too old for that now. She couldn't get away with it like when she was healthy. Like that time when they were living down there near Tampa when Mama was young and the landlord got the sheriff on to them to make them move out. He remembered Mama down on her stomach behind the stove loosening up something or other on the gas pipe with Delmar standing there handing her the tools. "You can't let the bastards get up on you," she was saying. "You hear that, Delmar? If you don't even it up, they grind you down even more. They spit on you ever' living time if you don't teach them you won't let them do it."

  And they had almost spit on them that time, if Mama hadn't been so smart. Some of the neighbors had seen Delmar down there that night just before the explosion and the big fire. And they told on him, and the police came there to the Salvation Army shelter where Mama was keeping them and they took Delmar off with them. And then he and Mama had gone down to the sheriffs office and he told them it was him, not Delmar, the neighbors had seen. And it had worked out just like Mama had said it would. They had to go easy on him because he was only thirteen and it was a first offense on top of that, and they'd have to handle him in juvenile court. But with Delmar being older, and with shoplifting and car theft and assault already on his books, they would try him as an adult. Fleck had only got sixty days in the D Home and a year's probation out of that one. Mama had always been good at handling things.

  But now she was just too old and her mind was gone.

  Fleck's reverie was ended by a woman hurrying around the corner toward him. She wore a raincoat, something shiny and waterproof over her head, and was carrying a plastic sack. She walked past Fleck's Lincoln without a glance. While he watched her in the rearview mirror, another figure appeared at the corner ahead of him. A man in a dark blue raincoat and a dark gray hat. He carried an umbrella and as he hesitated at the curb, looking for traffic, he opened it.

  It had started to rain, streaking the car windows, pattering against the windshield. Fleck glanced at his watch. Seventeen minutes until two. If this was his man, the man was early. He crossed the street, slanting the umbrella against the rain, and hurried down the sidewalk toward the telephone booth. He walked past it.

  Fleck slumped down in the seat, too low to see or be seen. He waited. Then he pushed himself up. He used the electric control to adjust the side mirror, found the man just as he turned the corner behind the car. Probably someone with nothing to do with this business, Fleck thought. He relaxed a little. He glanced at his watch again. Waited.

  What Mama had always taught Delmar and him had saved him there in the Joliet State Penitentiary, that was certain enough. It had been hard to do it. Things are always hard when you're a little man, and you're young. He thought they'd kill him if he tried it. But it had saved him. He couldn't have lived through those years if he'd let them spit on him. He'd have died. Or worse than that, been like the little pet animals they turned their baby dolls into. Three of them had been after him. Cassidy, Neal, and Dalkin, those were their names. Cassidy had been the biggest, and the one Fleck had been the most afraid of, and the one he'd decided he had to kill first. But looking back on it, knowing what he knew now, Dalkin was really the dangerous one. Because Dalkin was smart. Cassidy had made the move on him first, and when he got away from that, the three of him had got him into a corner in the laundry. He'd never forget that. Never tried to, in fact, because that had been the black, grim, hard-rock bottom of his life and he needed to think of it whenever things were tough, like today. They'd held him down and raped him, Cassidy first. And when they were all finished with him, he had just laid there a moment, not even feeling the pain. He remembered vividly exactly what he had
thought. He'd thought: Do I want to stay alive now? And he absolutely didn't want to. But he remembered what Mama had taught him. And he thought, I'll get even first. I'll get that done before I die. And he'd got up and told them all three they were dead men. Three or four other cons had been in the laundry by then. He hadn't noticed them. He wouldn't have noticed anyone then, but they got the word out in the yard. Cassidy had beaten him after that, and Dalkin had beaten him, too. But getting even had kept him alive.

  It was raining harder now. Fleck turned on the ignition and started the windshield wipers. As he did, the man with the umbrella turned the corner again. He'd circled the block and was walking again down the opposite sidewalk toward the telephone booth. Fleck turned off the wipers and glanced at his watch. Five minutes until two. The Client was punctual. He watched him enter the booth, close the umbrella and the door. Cassidy had been punctual, too. Fleck had gotten the note to him. Printed on toilet paper. "I'll have something just for you five minutes into the work break. Behind the laundry."

  He gambled that Cassidy would think only of sex. He gambled that a macho two-hundred-and-forty-pounder who could bench press almost four hundred pounds wouldn't be nervous about a hundred-and-twenty-pounder, the kid the yard called Little Red Shrimp. Sure enough, Cassidy wasn't nervous. He came around the corner, grinning. He had walked out of the sunlight into the shadow, squinting, reaching out for Fleck when he saw Fleck smiling at him, walking into the shank.

  Fleck dialed all but the final digit of the 266 number, glanced at his watch. Almost a minute early. Fleck could still remember the sensation. Holding the narrow blade flat, just as he'd practiced it, feeling it slide between the ribs, flicking the handle back and forth and back again as it penetrated to make certain it cut the artery and the heart. He hadn't really expected it to work. He expected Cassidy to kill him, or the thing to end with him on trial for premeditated murder and getting nothing better than life and probably the gas chamber. But there was no choice. And Eddy had told him it would be like Cassidy was being struck by lightning if he did it right.

  "Do it right, he shouldn't make a sound," Eddy had said. "It's the shock that does it."

  Now it was time. Fleck punched the final digit, heard the beginning of the ring, then The Client's voice.

  Fleck brought him up to date, told him about checking on Highhawk, about the woman lawyer showing up there with the cowboy, about Santero driving up and going in and the woman and the cowboy coming out a minute later. He told him about the cowboy walking right up and tapping on his window. "I circled the block and followed them back to the Eastern Market Metro station, and then I dropped it. There's just one of me. Now I want to know who that cowboy is. He's tall. Slender. Dark. Looks like an Indian to me. Narrow face. Leather jacket, boots, cowboy hat, all that. Who the hell is he? Something about him smells like cop to me."

  "What did he say?"

  "He said the woman thought I was following her. I told him he was crazy. Told him to screw off."

  "Amateurs!" The Client's voice was full of scorn. It took a moment for Fleck to realize he meant Fleck.

  Fleck pressed it. "You know anything at all about the cowboy? Know who he is?"

  "God knows," The Client said. "This is the product of you letting Santero slip away from you. We don't know where he went or who he talked to and we don't know what he did. I warned you about that."

  "And I told you about it," Fleck said. "Told you there's just one of me and seven of them, not counting the womenfolk. I can't watch them all all the time."

  "Seven?" The Client said. "Was that a slip? You told us you had subtracted one. The old man. You're expecting us to pay you for that."

  "Six is the correct number," Fleck said. "Old Man Santillanes is definitely off the list. Did you send the ten thousand?"

  "We wait for the full month. Now I wonder if we should also ask to see a little more proof."

  "I sent you the goddamn billfold. And the false teeth." Fleck sighed. "You're just stalling," he said. "I can see that now. I want that money by tomorrow night."

  There was a period of silence from the other end. Fleck noticed the rain had stopped. With his free hand he rolled down the window beside him. Then he picked up the camera and checked the settings.

  "The deal is no publicity, no identification for one full month. Then you get the money. After a month. Now I want you to think about Santero. I think he needs to go. The same deal. But remember it can't happen in the District. We can't risk that. It should be a long way outside the Beltway. A long way from here. And no chance of identification. No chance at all of identification."

  "I have got to have the ten thousand now," Fleck said. Never lose your temper, Mama had said. Never show them a thing. About all we got going for us, Mama had always told Delmar and him, is they never expect us to do anything at all but crawl there on the ground on our bellies and wait to get stepped on again.

  "No," The Client said.

  "Tell you what. If you'll have three thousand of it delivered to me tomorrow, then I can wait for the rest of it."

  "You can wait anyway," The Client said. And hung up.

  Fleck put down the telephone and picked up the camera. It rattled against the door, making him aware that he was shaking with rage. He took a deep breath. Held it. Through the range-finder he saw The Client emerge from the telephone booth, umbrella folded. He stood with hand outstretched, looking around, confirming that the rain had stopped. Fleck had taken four shots before he walked down the sidewalk away from him.

  Fleck let The Client get well around the corner before he left the car to follow. He kept a block behind him down Eighteenth Street, and then east to Sixteenth. There The Client turned again. He walked down the row of second-string embassies and disappeared down a driveway.

  Fleck walked past it with only a single sidelong glance. It was just enough to tell him who he was working for.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ®

  Since Joe Leaphorn and Dockery had arrived a little early, and the Amtrak train had arrived a little late, Leaphorn had been given the opportunity to answer a lot of Dockery's questions. He'd presumed that Dockery had volunteered to come down to Union Station on his day off because Dockery was interested in murder. And clearly Dockery was interested in that. And he was interested in what Perez might have seen in the roomette of his doomed passenger. But Dockery seemed even more interested in Indians.

  "Sort of a fascination with me ever since I was a kid," Dockery began. "I guess it was all those cowboy and Indian movies. Indians always interested me. But I never did know any. Never had the opportunity." And Leaphorn, not knowing exactly what to say to this, said: "I never knew any railroad people, either."

  "They have this commercial on TV. Shows an Indian looking at all this trash scattered around the landscape. There's a tear running down his cheek. You seen that one?"

  Leaphorn nodded. He had seen it.

  "Are Indians really into that worshiping Mother Earth business?"

  Leaphorn considered that. "It depends on the Indian. The Catholic bishop at Gallup, he's an Indian."

  "But in general," Dockery said. "You know what I mean."

  "There are all kinds of Indians," Leaphorn said. "What religion are you?"

  "Well, now," Dockery said. He thought about it. "I don't go to church much. I guess you'd have to say I'm a Christian. Maybe a Methodist."

  "Then your religion is closer to some Indians' than mine is," Leaphorn said.

  Dockery looked skeptical.

  "Take the Zunis or the Hopis or the Taos Indians for example," said Leaphorn, who was thinking as he spoke that this sort of conversation always made him feel like a complete hypocrite. His own metaphysics had evolved from the Navajo Way into a belief in a sort of universal harmony of cause and effect caused by God when He started it all. Inside of that, the human intelligence was somehow intricately involved with God. By some definitions, he didn't have much religion. Obviously, neither did Dockery, for that matter. And t
he subject needed changing. Leaphorn dug out his notebook, opened it, and turned to the page on which he'd reproduced the list from the folded paper. He asked Dockery if he'd noticed that the handwriting on that paper was different from the fine, careful script in the passenger's notebook.

  "I didn't take a really close look at it," Dockery said.

  About what Leaphorn had expected. But it was better than talking religion. He turned another page and came to the place he had copied "AURANOFIN W1128023" from the passenger's notebook. That had puzzled him. The man apparently spoke Spanish, but it didn't seem to be a Spanish word. Aura meant something more or less invisible surrounding something. Like a vapor. No fin in Spanish, if it held such a phrase, would mean something like "without end." No sense in that. The number looked like a license or code designation. Perhaps that would lead him to something useful.