Listening Woman jlajc-3

by Tony Hillerman

  TULL: God damn you. You pig. You don’t know him. You don’t even know his name. You don’t even know where he is. He never will let me down. He never will.

  Leaphorn looked up from the page, closed his eyes and tried to recreate the voice. Was it vehement? Or forlorn? The words on paper told him too little. But the repetition suggested a shout. And the shouting had ended that particular interview.

  Leaphorn put that folder aside and picked up the psychiatric report. He read quickly through the diagnosis, which concluded that Tull had psychotic symptoms of schizophrenic paranoia and that he suffered delusions and hallucinations. A Dr. Alexander Steiner was the psychiatrist. He had talked to Tull week after week following his bout with chest surgery and he’d established an odd sort of guarded rapport with Tull, surprisingly soon.

  Much of the talk was about a grim childhood with a drunken mother and a series of men with whom she had lived and finally with the uncle whose mule had kicked him. Leaphorn scanned rapidly through the report, but he lingered over sections that focused on Tull’s vision of his own immortality.

  STEINER: When did you find out for sure? Was it that first time in prison?

  TULL: Yeah. In the box. That’s what they called it then. The box. (Laughs.) That’s what it was, too. Welded it together out of boiler plate. A hatch on one side so you could crawl in and then they’d bolt it shut behind you. It was under the floor of the laundry building in the old prison the one they tore down. About five foot square, so you couldn’t stand up but you could lay down if you lay with your feet in one corner and your head in the other. You know what I mean?

  STEINER: Yes.

  TULL: Usually you got into that for hitting a guard or something like that. That’s what I done. Hit a guard. (Laughs.) They don’t tell you how long you’re going to be in the box, and that wouldn’t matter anyway because its pitch black under that laundry and its even blacker in the box, so the only way you could keep track of the days passing is because the steam pipes from the laundry make more noise in the daytime. Anyway, they put me in there and bolted that place shut behind me. And you keep control pretty good at first.

  Explore around with your hands, find the rough places and the slick places on the wall.

  And you fiddle with the buckets. There’s one with drinking water and one you use as a toilet. And then, all of a sudden, it gets to you. Its closing in on you, and there ain’t no air to breathe, and you’re screaming and fighting the walls and . . . and . . . (Laughs.) Anyway, I smothered to death in there. Sort of drowned. And when I came alive again, I was laying there on the floor, with the spilled water all cool and comfortable around me. I was a different person from that boy they put in the box. And I got to thinking about it and it came to me that wasn’t the first time Id died and come alive again. And I knew it wouldn’t be the last time.

  STEINER: The first time you died. Was that when the horse kicked you?

  TULL: Yes, sir, it was. I didn’t know it then, though.

  STEINER: And then you feel as if you died again when this truck guard shot you at Santa Fe?

  TULL: You can feel it, you know. There’s a kind of a shock when the bullet hits-a numb feeling. And it hurts a little where it went in and came out. Lot of nerves in the skin, I guess. But inside, it just feels funny. And you see the blood running out of you. (Laughs.) I said to myself, Well, I’m dyin again and when I come alive in my next life, I’m going to have another face.

  STEINER: You think about that a lot, don’t you? Having another face?

  TULL: It happened once. It’ll happen again. This wasn’t the face I had the first time I died.

  STEINER: But don’t you think that if they had taken you to the right kind of surgeon he could have straightened it out after you got kicked?

  TULL: No. It was different. It wasn’t the one I had.

  STEINER: When you look in a mirror, though. When you look at the right side of your face, isn’t that the way you always looked?

  TULL: The right side? No. I didn’t really look like that in my first life. (Laughs.) You got a cigarette?

  STEINER: Pall Malls.

  TULL: Thanks. You know, Doc, that’s why the pigs is so wrong about my buddy. The one they call Hoski. They don’t even know his real name. He’s like me. He told me once that he’s immortal, too. Just let it slip out, like he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. But it don’t make any difference to me if everybody knows. And there’s another way I can tell he’s like me. When he looks at me, he sees me. Me. You know. Not this goddamned face. He sees right through the face and he sees me behind it. Most people they look and they see this crazy eyeball, and they flinch, like they was looking at something sick and nasty. But but my buddy . . . (Laughs.) I almost let his real name slip out there. The first time he looked at me, he didn’t see this face at all. He just grinned and said Glad ta meetcha, or something like that, and we sat there and drank some beer, and it was just as if this face had peeled away and it was me sitting there.

  STEINER: But the police think this man sort of took advantage of you. Left you behind and all that.

  TULL: They think bullshit. Theyre trying to con me into talking. They think I’m crazy, too.

  STEINER: What do you think about that?

  TULL: You ought to see the Kiowa. He’s the crazy one. He’s got this stone. Claims its a sort of a god. Got feathers and fur and a bone hanging from it. Hangs it from this goddamn bamboo tripod and sings to it. (Laughs.) Calls it Boy Medicine, and Taly-da-i, or some damn thing like that. I think its a Kiowa word. He told us there at Wounded Knee that if those AIM people was willin to start shootin to kill, then this Boy Medicine would help them. The white man was goin to be wiped out and the Buffalo would cover the earth again. (Laughs.) How about that for crazy shit?

  STEINER: But isn’t that the leader of the organization? The one you’re supposed to be following?

  TULL: The Kiowa? Shit. My buddy, he was workin with him, and I’m workin with my buddy. Following? We don’t follow nobody. Not my buddy and me.

  Leaphorn skipped back and reread the paragraph about the Kiowa. What was it they had learned in his senior graduate seminar on Native American Religions? The sun was personified by the Kiowas, as he remembered it, and the sun had lured a Kiowa virgin into the sky and impregnated her and she had borne an infant boy. Much like the Navajos own White Shell Maiden, being impregnated by Sun and Water and bearing the Hero Twins.

  And the Kiowa maiden had tried to escape from the sun, and had lowered the boy to earth and escaped after him. But the sun had thrown down a magic ring and killed her. Then the boy had taken the ring, and struck himself with it, and divided himself into twins. One of the twins had walked into the water and disappeared forever. The other had turned himself into ten medicine bundles and had given himself to his mothers people as a sort of Holy Eucharist. Nobody seemed to know exactly what had happened to these bundles.

  Apparently they had been gradually lost in the Kiowas endless cavalry war for control of the High Plains. After the battle of Palo Duro Canyon, when the army herded the rag-tag remainders of these Lords of the Plains back into captivity at Fort Sill, at least one of the bundles had remained. The army had made the Kiowa watch while the last of the tribes great horse herd was shot. But according to the legend, this Boy Medicine still remained with his humiliated people. The Kiowas had tried to hold their great annual Kado even when captive on the reservation, but they had to have a bull buffalo for the dance.

  Warriors slipped away to the King Ranch in Texas to buy one, but they came back empty-handed. And after that, the old people taught, Boy Medicine had left the Kiowas and the last of the medicine bundles had disappeared.

  Leaphorn thought about it. Could Kelongy actually have come into possession of one of the sacred medicine bundles? He had preached a revival of the Buffalo religion. He promised the return of utopia, the white men exterminated, and Native Americans again living in a free society. The Buffalo then would again spring from the earth in their mil
lions and nurture the children of the sun.

  Leaphorn became aware of heat against his finger his cigarette burning too close to the skin. He took a final drag, stubbed it out, and studied the smoke trickling slowly upward from his lips. He felt a vague uneasiness. Some thought struggling to be remembered.

  Something nameless tugging at him. He tried to let it surface and found himself thinking vaguely of witchcraft, remembering incongruously something that had no connection at all with what he had been reading, remembering Listening Woman telling him that more than one of the holy sand paintings had been desecrated in the place where Hosteen Tso had been. And remembering that it had occurred to Listening Woman, as it had occurred to him, that Hosteen Tso might have been involved in some sort of perverted ritual of a coven of Navajo Wolves.

  The door to the interrogation room opened. A youngish man in a seersucker suit came in, glanced curiously at Leaphorn, said Excuse me, and left. Leaphorn stretched and yawned, put the Tull folder back into the accordion file that held it, and resumed his fishing expedition through the remaining material.

  The helicopter pilot seemed straight. He had flown copters in Vietnam. He had a wife and two children. There was no criminal record. The only question the FBI had been able to raise about his character referred to three trips to Las Vegas over the past two years, after two of which he told informants he had won small amounts of money.

  Kelongy had a much thicker file, but it added nothing substantial to Leaphorns knowledge. Kelongy was a violent man, and a bitter one, and a dreamer of deadly dreams. Three of the other minimum of six participants in the Santa Fe robbery remained nameless and faceless. There was a short file for a Jackie Noni, a young part-Potawatomi with a brief but violent police record, who apparently drove the car that blocked the armored truck.

  That left Tull’s buddy, the one the FBI called Hoski. There was nothing standard about Hoski.

  The FBI had no real idea who he was. It listed him as Frank Hoski, also known as Colton Hoski, a.k.a. Frank Morris, a.k.a. Van Black. The only photograph in the file as a grainy blowup obviously taken with a telephoto lens in bad light. It showed a trim but slightly stocky man, face partially averted, coming through a doorway. The mans hair was black, or very dark, and he looked Indian, possibly Navajo or Apache, Leaphorn thought, or possibly something else. He reminded Leaphorn vaguely of the uneasiness that had been troubling him, but he could dredge up absolutely nothing. The legend under the photo guessed Hoskis weight at about 190, and his height at about five foot eleven, his race as probably Indian, or part Indian, and his identifying marks as possible heavy scar tissue under hairline above right cheek.

  Not much was known of Hoskis career. He had first appeared at Wounded Knee, where informers listed him as one of the violents and as a right-hand man of Kelongy. A man who fit his description and used the name Frank Morris was seen by witnesses at the Ogden robbery and FBI informers confirmed that Hoski and Morris were identical. What was known about him was mostly pieced together from FBI informers who had infiltrated AIM. He was believed to be a Vietnam war veteran. Three informers identified him as army, two of the three as a demolitions expert, the other as an infantry company radioman. He occasionally smoked cigars, was a moderate drinker, was pugnacious (having engaged in fistfights on three occasions with other AIM members), often told jokes, had once lived in Los Angeles, had once lived in Memphis, and possibly once lived in Provo, Utah. Had no known homosexual tendencies, had no known relationships with females, had only one known close friend, a subject identified as John Tull. He had been identified again, on a most likely basis, as the man wearing the police uniform who had diverted the Wells Fargo truck into the robbery trap at Santa Fe. He came into view again in Washington, D.C., where he was working as a janitor for a company identified as Safety Systems, Inc., which dealt in burglary alarms, locking systems and other security devices.

  Leaphorn opened the last section of the report. The FBI, he was thinking, was in an enviable situation relative to Hoski. They had spotted him without Hoskis knowing he was spotted. A string tied to a key man in the Buffalo Society would almost inevitably lead eventually to other members of the terrorist group. The agency would put its best people on the surveillance team. It wouldn’t risk either tipping Hoski or allowing him to slip away.

  Leaphorn read. The head of the team of the FBI's best people, assigned to keep Hoski on the FBI string, was George Witover. And that, of course, was why Witover had been sent back to the Albuquerque agency, and why Witover was willing to break a rule. Hoski had cut the string under Witover’s eyes.

  Leaphorn read on. Until the very end, Witover’s operation had seemed to go flawlessly.

  Hoski had been located more than a month after the Santa Fe robbery. He followed a routine. Each weekday afternoon about 6 P.M., Hoski would emerge from his utility apartment, walk two blocks to a bus stop and catch a bus to his job at Safety Systems, Inc., where he was employed under the name Theodore Parker. On the premises, he would eat a midnight lunch, carried from his apartment in a sack, with a black fellow janitor. At about 4:30 A.M. he would leave the Safety Systems, Inc. building, walk five blocks to a bus stop and catch the bus back to his apartment. He would reemerge from the apartment in the early afternoon, to do grocery shopping, take care of his laundry at a neighborhood coin-operated laundromat, take long walks, or sit in a park overlooking the Potomac. The routine had rarely varied and never in any important degree until March 23.

  On that date he was observed at the laundromat engaging in a lengthy conversation with a young woman, subsequently identified as Rosemary Rita Oliveras, twenty-eight, divorced, an immigrant from Puerto Rico. On March 30, the two had again met at the laundromat, engaged in conversation, and later gone for a wandering walk which lasted more than three hours. On April 1, a Saturday, Hoski had surprised his surveillance by emerging from his apartment before noon and walking to the boardinghouse where Mrs.

  Oliveras resided. The two thereupon walked to a cafe, lunched and went to a movie.

  Subsequently Hoski spent most of his free time with Mrs. Oliveras. Otherwise, nothing changed.

  The mail cover on Hoski continued turning up one outgoing letter every week, either left for the mailman or dropped in a letter slot. The letter was invariably addressed to an Eloy R. Albertson, General Delivery, West Covina, California, and invariably contained the same message: Dear Eloy: Nothing new. Hoski.

  No one had ever appeared at the West Covina post office to claim the letters.

  The second variation in the pattern of Hoskis behavior came on March 11. A taxicab had pulled up to his address at about 1 P.M. and had taken Hoski to an urban renewal demolition district two blocks from the Potomac. He left the cab at a street corner, walked through a mixture of wind-driven rain and sleet to a telephone booth and made a brief call.

  He then walked down the street into the sheltered doorway of an abandoned storefront across the street from the Office Bar. Approximately twenty minutes later, at 2:11 P.M., a taxi discharged a passenger at the entrance of the Office Bar. The passenger was subsequently identified as Robert Rainey, thirty-two, a former activist in the Students for a Democratic Society, and a former AIM member, with a three-rap demonstration-related arrest record. He immediately entered the bar. The FBI agent watching Hoski notified his control that a meeting seemed impending. A second agent was dispatched. The second agent arrived twenty-one minutes after Rainey entered the bar. Informed that Hoski was still waiting across the street from the Office Bar, the second agent parked his van down the street. To avoid suspicion, he left the vehicle and took up a position out of sight in the doorway of an empty storefront. About three minutes after he did so, Hoski walked down the street to the doorway, spoke to the agent about getting in out of the weather, and then walked back up the street and into the Office Bar. The second agent thereupon checked and discovered that the alley exit from this bar was closed off by a locked garbage-access gate. Since the second agent had been seen, the first agen
t entered the bar to determine whether Hoski was making a contact. Hoski was sitting in a booth with Rainey. The agent ordered a beer, drank it at the bar and left there being no opportunity to overhear the conversation between Hoski and Rainey. Hoski left the bar about ten minutes later, walked to the telephone booth at the end of the block, made a brief telephone call, and then returned to his apartment by bus. He emerged again, as was usual, to take a bus to his job.

  It is presumed that Rainey delivered a message, the report said.

  Leaphorn rubbed his eyes. A messenger, of course, but how had the meeting been arranged? Not by mail, which was covered. Not by telephone, which was tapped. A note hand-delivered to Hoskis mail slot, perhaps. Or handed to him on a bus. Or a prearranged visit to a pay-phone information drop. There were any of a thousand ways to do it. That meant Hoski either knew he was being watched, or suspected he was, or was naturally cautious. Leaphorn frowned. That made Hoskis behavior relative to the meeting inconsistent. The bar was outside Hoskis regular territory, broke his routine, was sure to attract FBI attention. And so, certainly, was his behavior the long wait outside the bar, all that. Leaphorn frowned. The frown gradually converted itself to a smile, to a broad, delighted grin, as Leaphorn realized what Hoski had been doing. Still grinning, Leaphorn leaned back in the chair and stared at the wall, reconstructing it all.

  Hoski had known he was being followed and had gone to considerable pains to keep the FBI from knowing that he knew. The weekly letters to California, for example. No one would ever pick them up. Their only purpose was to assure the FBI that Hoski suspected nothing. And then the message had come. Probably a note to call a telephone number.

  From a pay phone. Hoski had picked an isolated bar and a meeting time which would guarantee low traffic and high visibility. He had picked a bar without a back entrance to assure that no one could enter without being seen by Hoski. He had notified the messenger of the meeting place only after he was in position to watch the front door. Then he had waited to watch the messenger arrive-and to watch the FBI reaction to the arrival and Hoskis other unorthodox behavior. Why? Because Hoski didn’t know whether the messenger was a legitimate runner of the Buffalo Society or an FBI informer. If the messenger was not FBI, the agency would quickly send someone to tail the messenger.