Tony Hillerman - Leaphorn & Chee 11 - Sacred Clowns

by Sacred Clowns(lit)

  "I checked the dining room," Davis said. He banged on the door again, half-heartedly this time. It was less a summons than an expression of frustrated anger-a gesture devoid of hope. "He's out here lobbying the Tribal Council about something," Davis said.

  "Maybe he's off somewhere with one of them. You a friend of his?"

  Davis really looked at Leaphorn for the first time, taking in polished boots, pressed jeans, silver belt buckle, blue shirt, denim jacket, gray felt hat.

  "Friend?" he said, and shook his head. "Unfortunately, yes. Old friends." The tone was sarcastic. Davis made a wry face. "Ever since grade school." Suddenly, his face lit with recognition. "Hey. Didn't you used to be with the Navajo police? Years ago? Is your name Leaphorn?"

  "Joe Leaphorn," Leaphorn said. "And you're Asher Davis."

  "Right," Davis said. "You remember the first time our trails crossed?"

  Leaphorn didn't. Probably at the Navajo Nation Fair at Window Rock, or the Crownpoint Rug Auction. In fact, he now remembered chatting with Davis at the auction years ago. "Crownpoint Rug Auction," he said.

  "Long before that," Davis said, grinning at the memory. "You were with the Navajo police. At Chinle. And I got in this crazy mess-" He gestured toward the door of 127. "Applebee again. He and I were in Farmington on some business or other, and he'd let his credit card expire so I let him use mine to rent a car there. He'd flown in on Mesa Airlines and he had to go to Canyon de Chelly to meet some people. Make a long story short, next thing I knew he's sent me the keys from San Francisco with a little sketch showing where the car's parked there at the canyon."

  Leaphorn's memory produced the incident- a hard one to forget.

  "Yeah," he said. "You called the station to see if we could find you someone who could drive it back to Avis at Farmington."

  "Before I went broke paying the overdue rental fees," Davis said. "I owe you a favor for that."

  As it had happened, the jailer's wife had been planning to take the bus to Farmington, so it hadn't been a problem. He had met Davis in person the next year at the rug weavers' cooperative auction at Crownpoint, and Davis's thanks had been embarrassingly effusive. But now Leaphorn did need a favor.

  "I really need to talk to this Applebee guy," Leaphorn said. "You have any idea where I could find him?"

  Davis frowned. "I know he's here to lobby against that waste dump thing, but I don't know who he'd be working on this evening. No idea."

  "I always wondered how you got stuck in that rental car situation. What happened?"

  "Well," Davis said, and looked past Leaphorn out across the parking lot. He shook his head. "That was a long time ago. Roger was getting his Nature First thing off the ground and he found out these big environmentalists from Frisco were coming out to see some Indian Country. Things were going well and he didn't want to break off the talks, so he rode down to Flagstaff with 'em and went on back to California so they could introduce him to some other rich folks."

  "I meant, What happened next? Did you break his arm or what?"

  Leaphorn thought then that perhaps Davis's reputation as an honest Indian trader was due to his face. It was an honest face, not practiced at stealth or secrecy. Now it showed a flash of anger, which faded into bitterness, which faded into something like sorrow.

  "Old friends," he said. He thought about that a moment, shook his head, and produced a sardonic chuckle. "He's done worse to me."

  Leaphorn extracted his card from his billfold and handed it to Davis. "If you find him before I do, would you ask him to contact me? At the home number."

  Davis glanced at the card, and back at Leaphorn, and back at the card. When he looked up again his honest face was no longer revealing anything at all. He nodded, banged on the door of 127 again, and walked away.

  Leaphorn arrived at Saint Bonaventure School a little early and found Lieutenant Toddy waiting. He was sitting on the little foldout doorstep of the dilapidated little trailer that had been Dorsey's home and office-drinking a Pepsi and looking bored. He broke the seal that secured the door, unlocked it, and held it open for Leaphorn.

  "You know Streib already searched this place," Toddy said. "I don't think he found anything interesting."

  "He didn't know what to look for," Leaphorn said.

  Toddy suppressed a grin and restored his expression to almost neutral. "That's supposed to be better, isn't it? Didn't I hear somebody saying that just a little while back? 'If you know what you're looking for, then you look for something specific and you don't see something that might be more important.' Somebody was saying that."

  "Well," Leaphorn said, grinning himself. "Whatever you say. But this time we're a little wiser. We know that Dorsey made an ebony cane with a silver knob-a copy of the antique cane the governor keeps at Tano Pueblo. Let's forget that stuff somebody told you and look for anything that would tell us who he made that cane for."

  "Or the cane itself?"

  "That'd be nice. But apparently the Kanitewa boy got his hands on it and took it to Tano and gave it to his uncle," Leaphorn said. He was looking around the tiny room, barely high enough to stand in and not much longer than the foldout cot against the opposite wall. Everything was tidy, everything neat, nothing relaxed, nothing comfortable. A tiny table, a single chair, the cot with a filing cabinet at its foot, a small desk. On the wall, a framed family photograph-mother, father, three boys, and a girl. Beside it, another framed photo of a bearded young man with a sweatband holding back long hair. Down the wall a bit, a picture of St. Francis of Assisi. Leaphorn paused to read the poem under it.

  He had conversations with the crows, This brother to the moon All he asked of his Lord Was to be God's fool.

  "This shouldn't take long," Toddy said, "searching this place."

  It didn't. Leaphorn started at the desk, which he guessed Dorsey must have made himself. It was fitted carefully in the area between the entrance and the sliding door which opened into a space that held a shower, a toilet stool, and a wash basin. Four wooden desk-organizer boxes stood in an exact line on the desk top, labeled UNFINISHED BUSINESS, GRADED, UNGRADED and TO BE FILED. The "graded" and "ungraded" boxes were empty but the other two held neat stacks of papers.

  If anything relating to the cane was here at all (and suddenly that seemed unlikely), it should be in the "unfinished business" box. After all, when Eric Dorsey left this tiny room never to return, the business of the cane was in fact unfinished. But if there was nothing there, Leaphorn would sort through the gray metal three-drawer filing cabinet that occupied the space at the foot of the narrow bed. He would search everywhere. It was the only lead he had, the only chance.

  He found what he wanted right on top of the stack in the "unfinished business" box, as if Dorsey might have dropped it there just before he left for his shop. Streib must have looked at it, but then it would have meant absolutely nothing.

  It was a sheet of poor-quality typing paper. On one side a poster advertising a meeting had been printed. On the other someone had neatly penciled in sketches of the Lincoln Cane and had scribbled a scattering of explanatory notes on dimensions and tapering and a line of jottings on the margin.

  "I think this is what we're looking for," he told Toddy, displaying the sheet. He sat on Dorsey's neat bed to study it.

  The drawings were the sort Leaphorn had himself once made in woodworking shop long ago when he was a student in a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school. Little lines marked margins, and numbers between arrows marked dimensions in inches. One sketch was of the cane itself. The other was of the head, with the details of the legend carefully drawn in: A. LINCOLN, PRES. U.S.A., 1863, and TANO. Across the page was written "Misc. File." Notes, in tidy handwriting that Leaphorn presumed was Dorsey's, ran down the right margin of the paper: ebony-get dark as possible tip-cast iron, neat fit. try farrier at Farmington. grind.

  head-buff, avoid dust. $450, $250 advance, delivery on/before Nov. 14.

  November fourteenth. The day Eric Dorsey died.

 
Leaphorn handed the paper to Toddy. "It looks like Dorsey got cheated out of his last two hundred," he said.

  There was nothing else related to the cane in either of the baskets. The contents of the file cabinet dealt mostly with classwork, warranties on power tools, operating instructions, and orders for supplies. Leaphorn checked through those, sorting out invoices from Albuquerque Specialty Woods. An invoice on a September 13 shipment listed "One ebony, 2 x 2 x 36."

  He showed it to Toddy. "Here's when he bought the wood," Leaphorn said.

  Toddy grunted.

  There were other Specialty Woods invoices in the file. Leaphorn checked through them, backward in time, in his advertised mode of just looking without knowing for what.

  "Be damned," he said. "Look at this."

  "Well, now," Toddy said. "It looks like Mr. Dorsey was in the cane-making business."

  The form principally covered an order of walnut, mahogany, and clear white pine. But the last item read, "No. 1 ebony blank 2 x 2 x 36."

  Leaphorn looked at the date. The shipment had been made more than two years ago.

  No more ebony purchases showed up in the other invoices. Leaphorn found the "Misc. File" folder in the back of the bottom drawer. In it was a thick packet of letters secured with a rubber band, copies of correspondence about an overdue VISA card payment, notes that seemed to deal with Christmas presents, and assorted sheets of paper bearing notes. One bore a neat pencil sketch of a Lincoln Cane.

  Leaphorn extracted it. On this sheet the instructions had been typed. They gave dimensions, details of the finish of the silver head, of how the cast-iron tip should be ground. The dimensions of the letters to form the legend were specified in millimeters. And now the legend read, A. LINCOLN PRES. U.S.A. 1863 POJOAQUE.

  Pojoaque. Leaphorn had been there long ago. A tiny place beside the highway north of Santa Fe. Leaphorn flipped through the bundle of envelopes. Thirty-seven letters, the first of them with the same return address in Fort Worth, Texas, the rest from the Veterans Administration hospital in Amarillo, and all with the name "George" above the address. They had come about a week apart at first and then less frequently. Leaphorn returned them to their hiding place in the bottom drawer.

  He handed Toddy the Pojoaque Lincoln Cane sheet.

  "I'd say he made two of them," Toddy said. "And the second one he finished right on the deadline."

  "Yeah," Leaphorn said. "That was the date, wasn't it?"

  "It was. So now we know Dorsey not only got killed. He got screwed."

  "Out of his final payment," Leaphorn said. "That's right. He just had twenty-something dollars in his billfold. But maybe he got paid in advance."

  Toddy shrugged. "No difference, now," he said. "You finished here?"

  "I think so," Leaphorn said. "Has Streib released this stuff so his kinfolks can claim it? Is somebody coming after it?"

  Toddy was looking at the family photograph. "I guess this one is him," he said. "The oldest boy." He moved from the photograph to the framed motto. "Did you read this?"

  "No," Leaphorn said.

  "I think it's out of the Bible. Maybe one of the psalms." Toddy read it, in the voice one reserves for reciting poetry:

  One thing I will ask of the Lord,

  This will I seek after:

  That I may dwell in the House of the Lord

  All the days of my life.

  "I think it's one of the Psalms of Solomon, or maybe it was David."

  "It's a lot like some of the verses from our Blessing Way," Leaphorn said. "You notice that?"

  Toddy's expression said he hadn't. But now he did. "I see what you mean," he said. "The House Made of Morning Mist, the House Made of Dawn." He turned and looked at the motto. "May I always walk with beauty before me."

  "Is Dorsey's family coming to get his stuff?" Leaphorn repeated.

  "No," Toddy said. "Nobody seems to want it. Let's get out of here."

  22

  FATHER HAINES had his coat on and his hat in his hand when Leaphorn tapped at his office door.

  "I just wanted to know if I could borrow a telephone," Leaphorn said. He displayed his AT&T calling card. "I need to make some long-distance calls."

  "How about mine?" Haines said. He pointed to his desk and glanced at his watch. "I have a meeting in Gallup, so just make yourself comfortable."

  Comfortable it was. From its looks, Haines's chair had been made about fifty years ago and heavily used. Its seat was well-padded leather. It swiveled, and tilted, and felt generally substantial. And the Haines telephone was one of those heavy black rotary-dial jobs made back when Ma Bell ruled.

  Leaphorn used it to dial information and get the number of the Clark Gallery in Santa Fe. Desmond Clark was in, and wanted to know how Leaphorn was doing, and when they were going to go deer hunting again, and why didn't Leaphorn retire, and how his health was holding up. Past all that old-friend exchange, they came to business.

  "You know all about the Lincoln Canes, I guess," Leaphorn said. "What would one be worth to a collector, and who would buy one? Fill me in on all that."

  "That's easy," Clark said. "Nobody would buy one. Everybody would know it was stolen property. You couldn't display it. Or brag about it."

  "How about the Zuni War Gods?" Leaphorn said. "Somebody bought them, knowing they had to have been stolen. And the Hopis have had lots of stuff disappear and then it turns up in collections. And-"

  "Okay," Clark said. "I see what you mean. The underground market. Let me think about it a minute."

  "Think," Leaphorn said, and waited.

  "I believe ol' Honest Abe sent nineteen of those out during the Civil War. Eighteen or nineteen. So they're extremely rare, and they're extremely unusual, and they look great.

  Ebony and silver, you know. And everybody's favorite national hero had them made with his name on them. So if you were a Lincoln man, or even a Civil War buff, one would be worth a ton. I'd guess bidding would start at a hundred thousand. Maybe better. But a stolen one-I don't know. I guess dealers who know the Lincoln trade could find a buyer. My field is Native American collectibles. I wouldn't know."

  "But you think as high as a hundred thousand?"

  "If it was a legitimate sale. Certified authenticity. All that. Say, for example, Taos Pueblo decided to sell its cane. All legal and everything. I'd say that would be low. You'd have the Indian buffs and the Lincoln buffs and the Civil War crazies all competing for it. But now you've got to tell me why you're asking."

  "In a minute," Leaphorn said. "Let's say it wasn't a public sale. Let's say a dealer just approached a collector and said he had acquired one and wanted an offer."

  "The collector calls the cops."

  "Let's say he was an unscrupulous collector."

  "He still calls the cops," Clark said. "Even quicker. He figures it's a sting. He's being set up."

  "Okay," Leaphorn said. "How about another possibility. Haven't some of those canes disappeared? Down through the generations. Got lost or something? What if-"

  "Aah," Clark said. "That opens a new can of worms. Yes. I'm no authority on these Lincoln Canes. You could find out in the library. But I think some of the pueblos don't have them any longer. Some of them went through pretty troubled times, you know. Like little Pojoaque, and Tesuque once, and Picuris."

  "So let's say somebody who really knows about such things gets his hands on one of those lost canes. Could he sell it?"

  Silence while Clark considered. Then he said, "I doubt it. Probably not."

  "Why not?"

  "He wouldn't have any documentation. There are a few dealers who could do it, I think. People with such reputations for absolute integrity that their word would be accepted." Clark considered what he had just said for a moment. "Well," he added, "I'd say their word plus a longish letter explaining the chronology of where the cane had been, whose hands it had passed through, and how it had come into their possession."

  "Who are these honorable dealers?" Leaphorn asked. "Besides you, I mean."
>
  Silence again. Leaphorn wondered if that had been taken as sarcasm. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded," he said. "This is nothing to joke about."

  "Okay," Clark said. "Maybe Clark Gallery, although we don't do much of that big-money rare stuff. Let me think who else." Silence again, and then he named an old but small gallery in Taos, another Santa Fe trader, one in Albuquerque, one in Gallup. "And a few independents, I think. I'd say Elliot Pew down in Tucson, and J. D. Regis in Albuquerque, and Asher Davis in Santa Fe, and maybe old man Fishbien, if he's still in the business." Silence again. "It's a short list. And there's a lot more honest dealers. But the thing is it takes years to get that word-is-his-bond reputation. And collectors, they're paranoid. If one of them gets screwed, or thinks he did, he spreads the word in that very small world and right away you couldn't sell a five-dollar gold piece for three dollars. You're dead. Nobody'll touch anything you're selling."