Threepersons Hunt

by Brian Garfield

  “What’s Harlan got to do with you and Maria?”

  “It ain’t that.” Joe was impatient with Watchman’s stupidity. “It ain’t me, it ain’t Maria. They put Harlan up to it.”

  “Who did?”

  “I guess it must have been Mr. Rand.”

  “How could Rand put Harlan up to anything?”

  “I heard tell they had a deal together, Harlan Natagee and Mr. Rand. Like under the table, you know?”

  “You mean all that tough Indian nationalism is a smoke screen.”

  “Man you don’t get as rich as Harlan by kicking white people in the teeth all the time. He’s got to be making deals all over the place. You heard about how they bust into that lawyer’s place, Kendrick, and they stole his papers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well that wasn’t Rand’s people did that. Ain’t no gang of Rand’s going to bust into Whiteriver without everybody seeing them. The people would be watching them too close for them to get away with busting in anyplace, you follow me? No, man, that wasn’t Rand, that was Harlan’s boys did that.”

  “You were in prison then. Who told you about it?”

  Joe shrugged. “Jimmy. He was one of them, he helped bust in there and get those papers. It was Harlan told him to do that.”

  “Why did Harlan want the papers?”

  “Man I don’t know that, except I’ll bet you Harlan turned around and gave them right over to Mr. Rand.”

  “But he couldn’t have used that excuse with Jimmy Oto, could he? He must have given Jimmy some reason.”

  “I don’t know what that was.”

  Will Luxan said, “Harlan is always against the man Kendrick because these lawyers and their paper, they take years, they delay everything. Harlan wants to stop all this lawyer business and get all the people to go over and dump rocks down those wells of Rand.”

  “Sure,” Joe said. “If the white guys ever caught a bunch of Innuns trying to wreck Mr. Rand’s wells they’d throw the tribe’s whole case out of court. That wouldn’t be no good for the tribe. But it’d be fine for Mr. Rand.”

  Joe stirred and it disturbed the pattern of the sand-painting. Watchman said, “Can you prove Harlan Natagee’s working with Rand?”

  “No. But it’s got to be, man.”

  “Did Jimmy Oto tell you they had a deal between them?”

  “Jimmy didn’t know nothing about that. He never stopped to think much. Me, I worked it out like I’m telling you. Harlan didn’t have no cause to steal those papers. It was Mr. Rand had the cause. You check it out, I bet you find out Harlan turned them right over to him.”

  “You think Harlan witched you all because Rand put him up to it?”

  “Maybe—maybe.”

  “All right, now you can tell me why.”

  “Why what?”

  “Why did Rand want all of you dead?”

  “I guess he got tired of footin’ the bill,” Joe said.

  5.

  The pistol was a loose weight in Watchman’s hand. It was past time to pile Joe into Luxan’s car and take him out of here in handcuffs but there were questions that still needed exposure. Confine Joe inside anything other than this wickiup and there was an excellent chance he would go silent.

  Watchman said, “You kept your mouth shut all these years for your wife’s sake, for your little boy’s sake. There’s no reason to, now.”

  Joe’s eyes sought help from Will Luxan but the old Mescalero only brooded upon his own fantasies and finally Joe rocked his face forward and back. “Well he was going to pay Joey’s way right through college.”

  “That was your deal with Rand.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did Rand kill Calisher?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t there. I come home that night, I got a call from Mr. Rand on the phone out to my line shack, he said he wanted to see me right away. It was the middle of the night, man, but he said it had to be right now. I drove over there and he walked me down to the foreman house, old Calisher was down on the floor there and this gun was on the chair. You could smell the powder smoke, you know? I guess he got shot a couple hours before that but you could still smell it. All Mr. Rand said to me, what he said was he had this dead body on his hands and I could help him out of this little problem, and he said he’d pay Joey right through college. So I listened to him, you know, I mean I wasn’t never gettin’ rich out in that line shack. He said all I had to do was take that gun off the chair and take it home and tell the cops I killed old Calisher because I found him trying to rape my wife. He said he’d make sure I didn’t spend more than a few years in the slam.”

  “Was the whole thing a lie? There was nothing between Calisher and your wife?”

  Rage stiffened Joe. ‘She was always straight with me.”

  “But Calisher was hot for the ladies, wasn’t he?”

  “She never give him the time of day, I’ll swear it on a Bible. She liked him but it wasn’t nothing like that.”

  “Who hired Kendrick to defend you?”

  “I guess the tribe did. I never saw the bill. Mr. Kendrick didn’t know about Mr. Rand, my deal with Mr. Rand. I told Mr. Kendrick I done it, I killed Calisher. He said he thought they’d throw the book at me and I’d get life, but I think maybe Mr. Rand made a deal with the prosecutor up there. I’m just guessing, I don’t know about that, you know, but Mr. Rand told me I’d be out in seven or eight and that’s the way it would’ve turned out except I bust out first. I pulled fifteen but you always get parole.”

  “Nobody ever did a paraffin test on your hands?”

  “A what?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Watchman said. “Kendrick paid out that money to your wife. Why Kendrick?”

  Joe puzzled it out. “Well what Mr. Rand told me, you know, he said he couldn’t afford to get his own name mixed up in that. He said he had to fix it so we got the money through somebody that couldn’t be, like, connected with him, you know? That was why he picked Mr. Kendrick to do that for him, he said nobody was ever going to believe they had anything to do with each other.”

  “But why did Kendrick go along with it?”

  “Well I guess Mr. Rand paid him, didn’t he?”

  “What about Harlan Natagee? Where’d he fit in all this?”

  “I don’t know nothing about that.” Joe’s ingenuous frown slipped into place.

  Watchman switched back. “How did Rand explain to Kendrick the money he was paying you?”

  “I don’t know that neither. I wasn’t there.”

  “Didn’t Kendrick ever say anything to you about it?”

  “No, man. That money didn’t start until I went in.”

  “Then you don’t have any real way to prove the money came from Rand, do you.”

  “Well look, he told me I’d get the money and then I got the money. You put that together for yourself.”

  Watchman reached behind him and picked up the magnum rifle. It was heavy with a great carved wooden butt-stock. The thick telescope had black caps over both lenses. There was a little dust on the piece, clinging to the oil. Watchman said, “Who was this for, then? Rand or Harlan?”

  Joe looked up and his eyes changed just a little. In that instant Watchman sensed weight behind him; the reflexes turned him around and Danny Sanada was crouched just outside the oval doorway with a double shotgun aimed at his face.

  The hammers were cocked.

  6.

  It was a range at which two loads of 12-gauge buck would tear the head off your shoulders. Watchman froze.

  Danny Sanada said, “Yeah. It figured.” He moved the barrels an inch, a warning gesture.

  Watchman slowly laid the automatic pistol on the ground and pushed it away from him with his foot. Sanada said, “Drop that magnum too, man.”

  Joe Threepersons said, “It ain’t loaded. He took the shells out of it.”

  “Put it down anyway,” Sanada said and Watchman obeyed. Sanada came inside. “You shouldn’t leave that Volvo around like that wh
ere folks can spot it. I knowed you was here.”

  Joe bent over. He stretched his hand to the rifle and dragged it to him and started picking up the cartridges. His movements destroyed most of the patterns of the sand-painting and Watchman became aware that Rufus Limita had stopped humming.

  “We got him,” Sanada said. “Now what do we do with him?”

  “Maybe just hang onto him while I get clear,” Joe said.

  “Yeah. Then he goes and gets a warrant on all of us for obstructing justice and kidnapping a police officer. Sometimes you don’t think too straight, Joe.”

  “What do you want to do then? Kill him? Man he ain’t done nothing to get killed for.” Joe glanced at Will Luxan and the old man said something in Apache and after that all of them talked in their own tongue. The sounds were familiar but the words meant nothing to Watchman. It was like a bad dream in which everything looked real and natural but nothing was comprehensible.

  Watchman glanced at the pistol but Sanada’s shotgun never wavered. He couldn’t fight that kind of drop.

  His mind worked quickly and clearly but his thoughts seemed to focus on irrelevant abstractions. Sanada had spotted the Volvo along the roadside. Had he got out of the Jeep wagon and sent the others on their way? Or were the others out there on the hillside watching? More likely they had gone on to work. But Sanada didn’t need any help, the shotgun was all the authority he needed.

  The talk paused and Watchman cleared his throat. “Think about it, Joe. You could turn yourself in now and clear yourself. You’ll be a free man soon enough. Cut loose now and you’ll be a fugitive for whatever’s left of your life.”

  The side of Sanada’s mouth curled up; no one made any other response but Will Luxan launched into a passionate speech in Apache; he addressed himself mainly to Rufus Limita but he kept glancing at Joe while he spoke.

  Joe began to shake his head with resolute negation and before Luxan stopped talking Joe picked up the loaded magnum rifle and got his feet under him. Sweat broke out like gel on hot dynamite across his face; he stumbled but kept his feet and when Luxan stopped in mid-sentence Joe said something brief and decisive. Luxan did not speak again. Joe carried the rifle around behind Danny Sanada and paused, bent-over, in the doorway. “You go back to Phoenix, you tell them you never found Joe Threepersons.”

  “No,” Watchman said. “I’ll find you again. It’s only a question of whether that happens before or after you get killed.”

  “Ain’t nobody getting a chance to kill me,” Joe said. “But if they did it wouldn’t be no great loss to anybody.” Then he went out.

  7.

  No one spoke; no one moved. Watchman heard Joe’s feet crunch across the weedy yard and there was some crashing around, things being flung aside. Then there was the grind of a starter and the chug of a low-geared engine that could only be the Land Cruiser. Its tires crushed the ground for a while and diminished and finally the sound was absorbed by distance.

  Watchman said, “How long do we sit here?”

  “A while,” Danny Sanada said.

  “You were right about one thing. All three of you are up against pretty serious charges.”

  “I guess sometimes you can’t go by that,” Sanada said ruefully. After that no one talked for quite a while.

  Watchman looked at Rufus Limita’s granulated features and the medicine man returned his scrutiny without guile. The three of them sat cross-legged in a loose circle around Watchman; none of them seemed especially perturbed but that was the role they were playing—patience was one of the oldest traditions.

  The time ticked by.

  8.

  They held him more than three hours. At the end of it Danny Sanada nodded and Will Luxan picked up the .30-30 and Watchman’s pistol and they all got in the Pontiac with Sanada beside Watchman in the back seat holding the shotgun cocked across his lap.

  They dropped Watchman at the roadside by his Volvo. Sanada unloaded the pistol and gave it back to him. “You gonna be coming after us?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well when it comes to these two here, I’d kind of like for you to remember it wasn’t neither of them that held no gun on you.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind.”

  “You do that,” Sanada said. His gaze was intent but there was no heat in it. Luxan and Rufus Limita hadn’t got out of the car; they sat in the front seat watching through the windshield. Sanada eased the two shotgun hammers down to safety-cock and slid the gun into the car through the open back window. “I guess you’ll know where to find me. I ain’t going nowhere.”

  He watched Sanada get into the car. It went away toward Whiteriver and he walked over to the Volvo.

  The left rear tire was flat. There didn’t seem to be any puncture. They had opened the valve with a toothpick and let the air out of it. The spare in the trunk hadn’t been fooled with. This time they hadn’t meant to set him afoot, just delay him a little more. That other time he was pretty sure now that it had been Jimmy Oto who’d shot out the four tires of his HP cruiser. Jimmy had been sitting on the tailgate of his old grey pickup at the horse ranch, swigging beer, and Jimmy must have followed Watchman up to where Watchman cut the sign of Joe’s horses. That had been Jimmy’s style. Sanada was a little less crude than that.

  He changed the tire and his clothes were drenched by the time he finished; July was getting vicious, even up here in the high hills.

  He got the box of shells out of the glove compartment and filled the magazine of the pistol and snugged it back into the Myers holster; he had a look under the hood, even examined the tie-rods and brake hoses underneath but nothing had been tampered with. The shock absorber was broken at its upper end and that was why it set up such an infernal banging against the resonating metal of the car’s body.

  When he tried the key it started up right away and he went bashing up the road at sixty-five, which was a little too fast for the curves. But the Volvo held it in spite of the broken suspension and he kept the pedal down hard.

  The wind sawed across his face, so hot that it did not cool him once the sweat had evaporated. He went north on State 73 into the piney woods until the high dark forest crowded close against both sides of the road. Along here the shade gave relief. He was headed away from White-river, away from Sanada and all the rest of them because the nearest telephone was at Indian Pine on the northern border of the Reservation.

  9.

  There was no number listed for Tom Victorio; he called Kendrick’s office and the secretary put him through to Victorio.

  “Where the hell were you last night?”

  “It’s a long story,” Watchman said. “Is my partner in town, do you know?”

  “He’s sitting right here in the office with me. We were thinking about calling out the United States Cavalry.”

  “What did you find last night?”

  “Nothing.” Victorio continued quickly: “I’d rather not talk about it right now but the answer’s nothing. Pure nothing.”

  “Maybe he keeps the stuff at home.”

  “Let’s just drop it,” Victorio said and Watchman knew it was because he had no way of being sure who might be listening on the line: Kendrick, the secretary.

  Watchman said, “Did Danny Sanada drive into town a little while ago?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’m not a traffic cop.”

  “Put Buck Stevens on, will you?”

  Stevens came on the line. “Jesus we were worried about you.”

  “Things are breaking,” Watchman told him. “We’ve got to move in a little bit of a hurry.”

  “You want to fill me in?”

  “I will when I get the time. Right now find out where you can locate a man named Harlan Natagee. Ask Victorio about him. When you find Harlan tell him we think Joe may be gunning for him. Don’t let him get near any open windows—Joe’s still got that magnum rifle.”

  “Do I put him under arrest? Protective custody?”

  “You put him under arrest for suspicion o
f conspiracy to commit murder.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Suspicion of conspiracy, remember it. We don’t want a false-arrest suit later. We may end up with no proof he’s done a thing. But I want him under wraps.”

  “Who’s he supposed to have conspired to kill?”

  “Don’t tell him anything. Recite him his rights. Tell him it’s mainly for his own protection.”

  “Sam, have we got a warrant?”

  “No. I have grounds for presumption that a crime’s in progress.”

  “What crime?”

  “Joe’s out there with a loaded big-game rifle. Isn’t that enough? Let’s worry about the formalities later. Now listen, this is important. When you arrest Harlan it’s got to be public, very public. When you put him in your car I want everybody to know you’re taking him with you up to Charles Rand’s ranch. Got that? Victorio can tell you where it is. I’ll meet you there.”

  “You want the whole town to know about it?”

  “I want the whole damn Reservation to know about it. Now have you got it straight?”

  “Yeah. I find him, I arrest him real loud and we go to Rand’s place and meet you there.”

  “Bring Victorio if he wants to come.”

  “I’ll ask him.”

  “Harlan’s got a right to legal counsel.”

  “Yeah.”

  “See you,” Watchman said.

  There was no listing for Charles Rand but he found Rand Enterprises and dialed and listened to it ring.

  A woman chirped at him. “Rand Enterprises, may I help you?”

  “I’d like to talk to Rand, please.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Rand is on a long-distance call at the moment. Could I take a message?”

  “You’ll have to bust in on him.”

  “Well it’s a very important call, really. I’m sure he wouldn’t like it if I——”

  “It’s an emergency,” Watchman said. His teeth were beginning to grind. “Get him on the phone, will you?”

  She chilled. “Very well, I’ll try. Hold on please.”

  Finally a baritone twanged at him. “Charles Rand. What’s all this about an emergency?”