Listening Woman jlajc-3

by Tony Hillerman

  And I thought about the rule the FBI has about not letting anybody see case files, and I thought about how we have just exactly the same rule, and it occurred to me that sometimes rules like that get in the way of getting things done. So I thought that since were both interested in that copter, we could sort of exchange information informally.

  You can see the report we made to the U.S. Attorney, Witover said.

  If you’re like us, sometimes that report is fairly brief, and the file is fairly thick. Everything doesn’t go into the report, Leaphorn said.

  What we heard from Window Rock was that you were at some sort of ceremonial, and saw the flashlight there with the name stenciled on it, but you didn’t get the flashlight or talk to the man who had it.

  That’s about it, Leaphorn said. Except it was a battery lantern and a boy who had it.

  And you didn’t find out where he’d gotten it?

  Leaphorn found himself doing exactly what he’d decided not to do. He was allowing himself to be irritated by an FBI agent. And that made him irritated at himself. That’s right, he said. I didn’t.

  Witover looked at him, the bright blue eyes asking Why not? Leaphorn ignored the question.

  Could you tell me why not? Witover asked.

  When I saw the lantern, I didn’t know the name of the helicopter pilot, Leaphorn said, his voice cold.

  Witover said nothing. His expression changed from incredulous to something that said: Well, what can you expect? And now you want to read our file, he stated.

  That’s right.

  I wish you could tell us a bit more. Any sudden show of wealth among those people.

  Anything interesting.

  In that Short Mountain country, if anybody has three dollars its a show of wealth, Leaphorn said. There hasn’t been anything like that.

  Witover shrugged and fiddled with something in the desk drawer. Through the interrogation rooms single window Leaphorn could see the sun reflecting off the windows of the post office annex across Albuquerque’s Gold Avenue. In the reception room behind him, a telephone rang once.

  What made you think I was particularly interested in this case? Witover asked.

  You know how it is, Leaphorn said. Small world. I just remember hearing somebody say that you’d asked to come out from Washington because you wanted to stay on that Santa Fe robbery.

  Witover's expression said he knew that wasn’t exactly what Leaphorn had heard.

  Probably just gossip, Leaphorn said.

  We don’t know each other, Witover said, but John OMalley told me you worked with him on that Cata homicide on the Zuñi Reservation. He speaks well of you.

  I’m glad to hear that. Leaphorn knew it wasn’t true. He and OMalley had worked poorly together and the case, as far as the FBI was concerned, remained open and unsolved.

  But Leaphorn was glad that Witover had suddenly chosen to be friendly.

  If I show you the file, Id be breaking the rule, Witover said. It was a statement, but it included a question. What, it asked, do, I get in return?

  Yes, Leaphorn said. And if I found the helicopter, or found out how to find it, our rules would require me to report to the captain, and he’d inform the chief, and the chief would inform Washington FBI, and then they’d teletype you. It would be quicker if I picked up the telephone and called you directly at your home telephone number but that would break our rules.

  Witover’s expression changed very slightly. The corners of his lips edged a millimeter upward. Of course, he said, you cant be tipping people off on their home telephones unless there’s a clear understanding that nobody talks about it later.

  Exactly, Leaphorn said. Just as you cant leave files in here with me if you didn’t know Id swear it never happened.

  Just a minute, Witover said.

  It actually took him almost ten minutes. When he came back through the door he had a bulky file in one hand and his card in the other. He put the file on the desk and handed Leaphorn the card. My home numbers on the back, he said.

  Witover sat down again and fingered the cord that held down the file flap. It goes all the way back to Wounded Knee, he said. When the old American Indian Movement took over the place in 1973, one of them was a disbarred lawyer from Oklahoma named Henry Kelongy. He glanced at Leaphorn. You know about the Buffalo Society?

  We don’t get cut in for much of that, Leaphorn said. I know what I hear, and what I read in Newsweek.

  Um. Well, Kelongy was a fanatic. They call him The Kiowa because he’s half Kiowa Indian. Raised in Anadarko, and got through the University of Oklahoma law school, and served in the Forty-fifth Division in World War Two, and made it up to first lieutenant and then killed somebody in Le Havre on the way home and lost his commission in the court-martial. Some politics after that. Ran for the legislature, worked for a congressman, kept getting more and more militant. Ran an Indian draft-resisters group during the Vietnam war. So forth. Behind all this he was working as a preacher. Started out as a Church of the Nazarene evangelist, and then moved over into the Native American Church, and then started his own offshoot of that. Kept the Native American peyote ceremony, but tossed out the Christianity. Went back to the Sun God or whatever Indians worship. Witover glanced quickly at Leaphorn. I mean whatever Kiowas worship, he amended.

  Its complicated, Leaphorn said. I don’t know much about it, but I think Kiowas used the sun as a symbol of the Creator. Actually, he knew quite a bit about it. Religious values had always fascinated Leaphorn, and he’d studied them at Arizona State but just now he wasn’t prepared to educate an FBI agent.

  Anyway, Witover continued, to skip a lot of the minor stuff, Kelongy had a couple of brushes with the law, and then he and some of his disciples got active in AIM. Were pretty sure they were the ones who did most of the damage when AIM took over the Bureau of Indian Affairs office in Washington. And then at Wounded Knee, Kelongy was there preaching violence. When the AIM people decided to cancel things, Kelongy raised hell, and called them cowards, and split off.

  Witover fished a pack of filtered cigarettes from his pocket, offered one to Leaphorn and lit up. He inhaled, blew out a cloud of blue smoke. Then we started hearing about the Buffalo Society. There was a bombing in Phoenix, with pamphlets left scattered around, all about the Indians killed by soldiers somewhere or other. And some more bombings here and there . . . Witover paused, tapping his fingertips on the desktop, thinking. At Sacramento, and Minneapolis, and Duluth, and one in the South Richmond, I think it was.

  And a bank robbery up in Utah, at Ogden, and always pamphlets identifying the Buffalo Society and a bunch of stuff about white atrocities against the Indians. Witover puffed again. And that brings us to the business at Santa Fe. A very skillful piece of business. He glanced at Leaphorn. How much you know about that?

  Nothing much that didn’t apply to our part of it, Leaphorn said. Hunting the helicopter.

  The afternoon before the robbery, Kelongy checked into the La Fonda and asked for a fifth-floor suite overlooking the plaza. You can see the bank from there. Then He used his own name? Leaphorn was frowning.

  No, Witover said. He looked slightly sheepish. We had a tail on him.

  Leaphorn nodded, his expression carefully noncommittal. He was imagining Witover trying to write the letter explaining how a man had managed a half-million-dollar robbery while under Witover’s surveillance.

  We’ve pretty well put together exactly what happened, Witover went on. He leaned back in the swivel chair, locked his fingers behind his head, and talked with the easy precision of one practiced in delivering oral reports. The Wells Fargo truck had pulled away from the First National Bank on the northwest corner of Santa Fe Plaza at three-ten. At almost exactly three-ten, barriers were placed across arterial streets, detouring traffic from all directions into the narrow downtown streets. As the armored truck moved away from downtown, traffic congealed in a monumental jam behind it. This both occupied police and effectively sealed off the sheriffs and police departments,
both in the downtown district. A man in a Santa Fe police uniform and riding a police-model motorcycle put up a barrier in the path of the armored truck, diverting a van ahead of the truck, the truck itself and a following car into Acequia Madre street. Then the barrier was used to block Acequia Madre, preventing local traffic from blundering onto the impending robbery. On the narrow street, lined by high adobe walls, the armored truck was jammed between the van and the car.

  Witover leaned forward, stressing his point. All perfectly timed, he said. At about exactly the same time, some sort of car nobody can remember what drove up to the Airco office at the municipal airport. The copter was waiting. Reserved the day before in the name of an engineering company a regular customer. Nobody saw who got out of the car and got into the copter.

  Witover shook his head and gestured with both hands. So the car drove away, and the copter flew away, and we don’t even know if the passenger was a man or a woman. It landed on a ridge back in the foothills north of St. Johns College. We know that because people saw it landing. It was on the ground maybe five minutes, and we can presume that while it was on the ground, the money from the Wells Fargo truck was loaded onto it and maybe it took on a couple more passengers.

  But how’d they get into the armored truck? Leaphorn said. Isn’t that supposed to be damned near impossible?

  Ah, Witover said. Exactly. The pale blue eyes approved Leaphorns question. The armored truck is designed with armed robbery in mind and therefore the people on the inside can keep the people on the outside out. So how did the robbers get in? That brings us to the Buffalo Societies secret weapon. A crazy son-of-a-bitch named Tull.

  Tull? The name seemed vaguely familiar.

  He’s the only one we got, Witover said. He grimaced. It turns out Tull thinks he’s immortal. Believe it or not, the son-of-a-bitch claims to think he’s already died two or three times and comes back to life. Witover’s eyes held Leaphorns, gauging his reaction. That’s what he tells the federal psychiatrists, and the shrinks tell us they believe he believes it.

  Witover got up, and peered through the glass down at Gold Avenue. He sure as hell acts like he believes it, he continued. All of a sudden the truck driver finds himself blocked, front and rear, and Tull jumps out of the van and puts some sort of gadget on the antenna to cut off radio transmission. By the time he gets that done the guard and driver are bright enough to have figured out that a robbery attempt is in progress. But Tull trots around to the rear door and starts stuffing this puttylike stuff around the door hinges. And what the hell you think the guard did?

  Leaphorn thought about it. The guard would have been incredulous. Yelled at him, probably.

  Right. Asked him what the hell he was doing. Warned him he’d shoot. And by the time he did shoot, Tull had the putty in and of course it was some sort of plastic explosive with a radio activated fuse. And then the guard didn’t shoot until Tull had it worked in and was running away.

  Then bang! Leaphorn said.

  Right. Bang. Blew the door off, Witover said. When the police finally got there, the neighbors were giving first aid. Tull had a bullet through the lung, and the guard and the driver were in pretty bad shape from blast concussions, and the money was gone.

  There must have been a bunch of them, Leaphorn said.

  Altogether probably six. One to put out the detour signs to create the traffic jams, and whoever got on the helicopter, and Kelongy, and the one dressed as a cop who diverted the armored truck and followed it down Acequia Madre, and Tull and the guy driving the car behind the van. And each one of them faded away as his part of the job was done.

  Except Tull, Leaphorn said.

  We got Tull and an identification on the one who wore the police uniform and had the motorcycle. The driver and the guard got a good look at him. He’s the guy who called himself Hoski up at Wounded Knee, and something else before then, and a couple of other names since. He’s Kelongys right-hand man.

  This Tull, Leaphorn said. Was he in on that Ogden bank robbery? If I remember that one, didn’t they pull it off because a crazy bastard walked right up to a gun barrel?

  Same guy, Witover said. No doubt about it. It was another money transfer. Two guards carrying bags and one standing there with a shotgun and Tull walks right up to the shotgun and the guards too damned surprised to shoot. You just cant train people to expect something like that.

  Maybe its a bargain, then, Leaphorn said. They got a half-million dollars and you got Tull.

  There was a brief silence. Witover made a wry face. When Tull was in the hospital waiting to get the lung fixed up, we got bond set at $100,000 which is sort of high for a non-homicide. Figured they were tossing Tull to the wolves, so we made sure Tull knew how much they had from the bank, and how much they needed to bail him out. Witover’s blue eyes assumed a sadness. If they didn’t bail him out, the plan was to offer him a deal and get him to cooperate. And sure enough, no bail was posted. But Tull wouldn’t cooperate.

  The shrinks warned us he wouldn’t. And he didn’t. When no bail was posted, there was a theory that the Buffalo Society had lost the money and that Tull somehow knew it. That explained why they couldn’t find .the copter. It had crashed into Lake Powell and sunk.

  Leaphorn said nothing. He was thinking that the route of the copter, if extended, would have taken it down the lake. The red plastic lantern with Haas stenciled on it was a floating lantern. And then there was the distorted story that its finder had seen a great bird diving into the lake.

  Yes, Leaphorn said. Maybe that’s it.

  Witover laughed, and shook his head. It sounded plausible. Tull got his lung healed, and they transferred him to the state prison at Santa Fe for safekeeping, and months passed and they talked to him again, told him why be the fall guy, told him it was clear nobody was going to bond him out, and Tull just laughed and told us to screw ourselves.

  And now Witover paused, his sharp blue eyes studying Leaphorns face for the effect and now they show up and bail him out.

  It was what Leaphorn had expected Witover to say, but he caused his face to register surprise. Goldrims must be Tull, new to freedom and running to cover before the feds changed their minds and got the bond revoked. That would explain a lot of things. It would explain the craziness. He calculated rapidly, counting the days backward.

  Did they bail him out last Wednesday?

  Witover looked surprised. No, he said. It was almost three weeks ago. He gazed at Leaphorn, awaiting an explanation for the bad guess.

  Leaphorn shrugged. Where is he now?

  God knows, Witover said. They caught us napping. From what we can find out, it was this one they call Hoski. He made a cash deposit in five Albuquerque banks. Anyway, Tull's lawyer showed up with five cashiers checks, posted bond, got the order, and the prisoner was sprung before anybody had time to react. Witover looked glum, remembering it. So they didn’t lose the money. There goes the theory that the copter sank in the lake. They leave him in all that time, and then all of a sudden they spring him, Witover complained.

  Maybe all of a sudden they needed him, Leaphorn said.

  Yeah, Witover said. I thought of that. It could make you nervous.

  » 12 «

  T

  he right eye of John Tull stared directly at the lens, black, insolent, hating the cameramen then, hating Leaphorn now. The left eye stared blindly upward and to the left out of its ruined socket, providing a sort of crazy, obscene focus for his lopsided head. Leaphorn flipped quickly back into the biographical material. He learned that when John Tull was thirteen he had been kicked by a mule and suffered a crushed cheekbone, a broken jaw and loss of sight in one eye. It took only a glance at the photographs to kill any lingering thoughts that Tull and Goldrims might be the same. Even in the dim reflection of the red warning flasher, a glimpse of John Tull would have been memorable. Leaphorn studied the photos only a moment. The right profile was a normally handsome, sensitive face betraying the blood of Tull’s Seminole mother. The left showed w
hat the hoof of a mule could do to fragile human bones. Leaphorn looked up from the report, lit a cigarette and puffed thinking how a boy would learn to live behind a façade that reminded others of their own fragile, painful mortality. It helped explain why guards had been slow to shoot. And it helped explain why Tull was crazy if crazy he was.

  The report itself offered nothing surprising. A fairly usual police record, somewhat heavy on crimes of violence. At nineteen, a two-to-seven for attempted homicide, served at the Santa Fe prison without parole which almost certainly meant a rough record inside the walls. And then a short-term armed-robbery conviction, and after that only arrests on suspicion and a single robbery charge which didn’t stick.

  Leaphorn flipped past that into the transcripts of various interrogations after the Santa Fe robbery. From them another picture of Tull emerged wise and tough. But there was one exception. The interrogator here was Agent John OMalley, and Leaphorn read through it twice.

  OMALLEY: You’re forgetting they drove right off and left you.

  TULL: I wanted to collect my Blue Cross benefits.

  OMALLEY: You’ve collected them now. Ask yourself why they don’t come and get you.

  They got plenty of money to make bail.

  TULL: I’m not worrying.

  OMALLEY: This Hoski. This guy you call your friend. You know where he is now? He left Washington and he’s in Hawaii. Living it up on his share. And his share is fatter because part of its your share.

  TULL: Screw you. He’s not in Hawaii.

  OMALLEY: That’s what Hoski and Kelongy and the rest of them are doing to you, baby.

  Screwing you.

  TULL: (Laughs.)

  OMALLEY: You ain’t got a friend, buddy. You’re taking everybody’s fall for them. And this friend of yours is letting it happen.

  TULL: You don’t know this friend of mine. I’ll be all right.

  OMALLEY: Face it. He went off and left you.