by Win Blevins
“Goldman is being charged with obstruction of justice,” said Shoe Polish.
Mr. John glared at him. “Seaman Goldman? Because he did some investigating and made some discoveries on his own?”
“That’s not how I’d put it, sir.”
“Commander Ford, I showed them what I found. They—”
Mr. John held up a finger, and I stopped talking. This was his location, and he was boss. He considered for a moment, turned his head, and spoke inaudibly to Pease. Sometimes the patch on his left eye helped him shut out people like Shoe Polish and Choirboy.
Pease scurried along the dirt road toward the trading post.
“Special Agent Tuckerman, Special Agent Mize, please tell me everything about the situation here.”
They recited all of it, what I said I’d found, what they’d seen, what Linda said. Using their notes, they showed off what meticulous care they had taken in observing and listening. Shoe Polish nailed it down with, “The Bureau regards his activity as obstruction of justice.”
Mr. John had chewed this morning’s white handkerchief to death. He spat it on the ground. Then, unpredictably, he broke into a great big smile. Charm was one of his modes. “Gentlemen, I have nothing but admiration for the FBI, and I certainly respect regulations and the chain of command. You may know that I have some experience with such matters.
“Right now my orders are to get one job done—direct a motion picture. And Seaman Goldman’s arrest would present me with obstacles.”
Shoe Polish started to speak, but Mr. John held up a finger.
“May I make a suggestion, Special Agent Tuckerman? Please come to Mr. and Mrs. Goulding’s office with me, bring your prisoner, and let’s make a couple of calls.”
Tuckerman considered. “All right, sir, with one understanding. A federal investigation of a violent felony takes precedence over making a movie.”
Mr. John inclined his head courteously. “A felony comes first with me as well, gentlemen, and my studio. Especially an assault on one of our stars.”
Up at the trading post Mr. John solicited the help of Mike Goulding. She led us all to the office, and we stood around for a moment while Pease finished a conversation on the two-way radio. Then we all walked in and Mr. John sat down at the radio. Pease sat at Mike’s typewriter and started pecking.
“What’s the name of the SAC at Albuquerque?” Meaning the special agent in charge, head of the Albuquerque office, and these agents’ boss. Mr. John understood chain of command, all right. Also the power of going over someone’s head.
“Thompson,” said Tuckerman.
Some radio-speak followed—“Come in, affirmative, negative,” that sort of thing. Then Mr. John introduced himself to SAC Thompson, complete with his own titles and commendations. He also mentioned that he’d won six Oscars. It was weird to hear Mr. John brag, but I supposed he’d learned in the navy how to push the power buttons.
Pease handed Mr. John a sheet half full of typewriting. “I’m informed,” Mr. John told Thompson, “that the attack on Linda Darnell was the lead story in the two biggest motion-picture dailies yesterday, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. It’s also prominent news in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and other newspapers across the country.”
“That’s right,” said Thompson, his voice too loud on the radio. He sounded glad about the ink the crime was getting. “And Photoplay will be all over it, et cetera.”
“Thank you. Now give me a moment, please.”
“Roy,” he said to Pease, “were the stories accurate?”
“They ran with what I telegraphed them,” said Pease. “What other choice did they have?”
Mr. John allowed no one from the press on his location. He said softly to Pease, “Now write your headlines and the lead.”
He spoke into the radio again. “SAC Thompson, there has been an important discovery in this case. I’m going to ask Special Agent Tuckerman to explain it to you.”
Tuckerman slapped the sides of his own head with both hands. But he was trapped. Mr. John and I would hear every bit of whatever he said. So he told the truth pretty straight, except for adding that he suspected that I might have made the prints myself, instead of discovering them. As soon as he could, he stepped away from the radio.
Thompson had the nerve to say to him, “Good work.”
Mr. John plunged right back in. “Now, SAC Thompson, the newspapers and industry journals ran what we told them yesterday. They have no source but us, so they’ll do the same again tomorrow and next week and so on. Let me discuss the implications of that with you. The implications for you.”
Tuckerman and Mize leaned close to Mr. John, like they were scared of missing something. Maybe they were scared.
“You may not know, SAC Thompson, that my last year of military service was with the OSS.” The Office of Strategic Services, the U.S. government intelligence agency. “We at the OSS did our best to keep our operations secret and out of the public eye.”
Pease rat-a-tatted away.
“Come to the point, Mr. Ford.”
Mr. John ignored this impertinence. “Your agency, as you know, SAC Thompson, operates the opposite way. Your director loves publicity.”
I gulped. J. Edgar Hoover damn well did. But to mention it?
“He will eat up a story about a woman movie star courageously going deep into Indian country to create a work of art and in the course of her duties being brutally assaulted, perhaps even sexually assaulted. Especially with implications that an Indian may be the perpetrator. And your director will be watching you most carefully. You may have heard from him already.”
Thompson said nothing.
“So you want to tread carefully here,” said Mr. John, “and in particular you do not want the Bureau embarrassed by what the newspapers and movie magazines say. They are available on every street corner, in every drugstore, dime store, and grocery store. They are the most widely read publications in this great country. They are public opinion.”
Silence. I wondered if Tuckerman and Mize could still draw breath.
“Now I call your attention to this fact: We are in a very remote location here, a full day’s drive from the nearest town, in an area where local people don’t speak English. The magazines are hungry, in fact desperate, for news about Miss Darnell. We get dozens of requests every day to interview her. I will allow no one in the press or the radio to speak to her. Absolutely no one. If any of their representatives show up here, I will have his ass kicked unceremoniously two hundred miles to the railroad station.”
Pease jerked a sheet out of his typewriter and handed it to Mr. John.
Mr. John glanced at the writing and nodded to himself. “Bottom line. The press is entirely dependent on the version of the news that we choose to telegraph to them each day. Now, SAC Thompson, I assure you, the press is important to us as well. We want all the inches of coverage, and all the photos, we can get. But we let the public know only what we want to tell them.”
The Fibbies sure as hell could see the head of the hammer falling, and they knew whose skulls it was going to hit.
“So let me read what our publicist has written for them today. I’m just seeing it for the first time, and I will go over it carefully with him to make sure it’s what I have in mind.”
Mr. John crinkled the sheet audibly.
“Headline: MAJOR BREAK IN DARNELL CASE
“Subhead: NAVAJO SHORE PATROLMAN SPOTS WHAT FBI AGENTS MISSED.”
“Next subhead: FBI ARRESTS HERO WHO SHOWED THEM UP.”
Mr. John paused, stuck a handkerchief in his mouth for confidence, and said, “So, SAC Thompson, would you like me to read you the rest of the story? Or perhaps I should have someone at the studio telegraph it to you and to the director himself.”
“I think I get the point, Mr. Ford.”
“Commander Ford,” Mr. John corrected him. “Let’s make this simple. I request that you tell your agents to release Seaman Goldman. That’s what you give m
e. Here’s what I give you: I instruct the seaman to work with your agents, tell them everything he knows and everything he thinks, and cooperate with them completely. He’s Navajo and can provide knowledge they don’t have, and can translate during their interviews with the Navajos.”
“Let me speak to Special Agent Tuckerman,” said Thompson. “In private.”
Mr. John grinned at Tuckerman. Then he, Pease, and I left the office and walked across to Linda’s cabin. I leaned against the Fibbies’ car. None of us had any doubt about what was getting said on that radio.
I was super-animated. Mr. John had not only gotten me out of a trip to jail, but inside the investigation. It was a beautiful thing. Pure justice.
Shoe Polish and Choirboy came down to us, their body language all draggy, and Mize uncuffed me. I rubbed my wrists.
Tuckerman looked at Julius and Colin, propped against the front of Linda’s cabin. “We’ll wait until after lunch to talk further with Miss Darnell.”
Mr. John, Pease, and I strolled off into a midday that sported the most glorious sunlight I’d ever seen.
“Mr. John,” I said, “that was a masterful performance.”
He grinned up at me. “Call me Jack.”
Fifteen
Linda plumped up her pillow, pulled the covers above her shoulders, and turned her back to me. After the two days we’d had—the long drive yesterday, her dazzler of a performance for the movie folks, my arrest, Jack to the rescue—she was worlds beyond exhausted and universes beyond tired. Me, too.
“I’m sorry, Yazzie, I’m not ready to be touched yet.”
“Linda, that is not what’s on my mind.”
She laughed a little bit. “Liar.”
“It’s sort of a lie, but Linda? I can like you for more than what we do in bed. Anyone could.”
“Oh. That’s … that’s sweet.”
We came from different worlds, all right, and I thought that she could use some of my world. Feeling good, nurtured, standing on your own two feet, feeling love from the earth and her cycles. I wished I could tie that up in a box with a ribbon and give it to her. That night I slept in Cathy Downs’s bed, doing what I was supposed to do. Protect Linda. Who might have been safer where Cathy was, in the tent.
* * *
Do I need to tell you that Tuckerman and Mize didn’t let me anywhere near the investigation? That they hired Harry Goulding to do their translating? Or that they came and went in the cabin as they damn well pleased?
One time they came in so fast, and without a knock or word, that they embarrassed Linda in the water closet using the chamber pot.
I got right in Tuckerman’s face. “You guys not only have the manners of goats,” I said, “you’re stupid. My job is—”
“We know how to investigate a felony,” said Tuckerman.
“Does that count with you?” barked Mize. He was holding a crate they’d brought to make getting in and out of the crawl space easier.
“My job is guarding Miss Darnell,” I said. “I’m armed, I’m trained, and anyone who comes in without knocking and asking permission is taking his chances.” Pause. “Fair warning.”
Mize shouldered me from the side.
I shoved him hard against the door facing. “I’d love to mix it up with you,” I said, my voice a growl. Shore patrolmen are used to brawls, and I was spoiling for one.
“You’re on the edge of assaulting a federal officer,” said Tuckerman in a sharp tone.
I backed off. “You started down this road,” I said, “and you’re both out of line. Enjoy reading about yourselves in the newspapers. Does Roy Pease have your first names?”
“The investigation comes first,” Tuckerman said. “First.”
“I believe Commander Ford will want to know whether it comes ahead of common courtesy.” I nodded toward the water closet.
Silence.
Linda came out of the closet. Mize emptied the pee outside—trying to be polite or to embarrass her more?
Tuckerman glared at me. Then he stepped onto the crate and disappeared into the darkness above.
Fortunately, Linda slept most of that day. I got a gofer to drive up to Oljato and bring back an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel for me. If I couldn’t be rich, I could at least read about it.
From above I heard the word “prints” more than once. I gave thought to where fingerprints might be. On the rubber sheath of the electric cord going to the lightbulb? On the bulb itself? And I saw black fingerprint dust on the transparent fixture that kept the bulb from glaring at us naked.
As they left, I said, “Get any prints you can use?”
Mute shoulder blades, a door slowly closing.
I liked the idea of prints. Solid procedure. But if her attacker hadn’t been in the army or in prison, or if he was a very careful criminal, his prints probably wouldn’t be on file.
Whatever prints they got would be photographed meticulously, then sent to Flagstaff by car and to Albuquerque by train, be photographed again in a lab, and those photos sent to the Arizona and Utah state police and to Washington, D.C., while the originals were filed. It would take a couple of weeks to get word on the person. By then Linda would be back in Hollywood, the shoot would be over, everybody gone, and the whole thing out of my life, nothing to do with me. Which felt … odd. Cold.
I pulled a chair up by the bed and studied her face. The doctor in Flagstaff had told her that it would be fine, and it seemed to be true enough. She had a paint palette of bruises and some scratches, but no cuts that would leave scars. She had a mild concussion, according to the doc, and I could see signs of that. Back and forth from clearheaded, sometimes fuzzy, sometimes dizzy for a moment. Then back to piss and vinegar.
She had nothing more to do here than those still shots for publicity. With Raphael’s magic, and the right lighting, the bruises wouldn’t show. Every now and then, she slipped into a haunted look, like putting on a gray silk gown. If the camera caught that in its lens, the photos would be more art than publicity.
A few more days and my life would slow down again. Having been arrested and cuffed and then going through that drill all over again wasn’t a particular highlight. But it was the flip side of being in the heat of this amazing woman. She was living large. Terrible and extraordinary things happen in a large life. I understood that. I still wanted a big life, but a life that depends upon the admiration of others? No. That’s dangerous to the body and the spirit. All I had to do was look at the F. Scott Fitzgerald books we had on our shelves at home to understand that.
Sixteen
Linda was excited, fidgety, almost dithery. She’d prettied up in one of her Mexican dance dresses this morning, for no reason I could figure. Yesterday she’d finished her stills, and we were set to leave by town car for La Posada and the Super Chief tomorrow, driven by Julius. She had no work to do today.
She hung around the entrance to the food tent and made silly conversation with people she’d hardly spoken to during the entire shoot. She was absolutely delighted to see everyone, very impressed by whatever they were wearing, and thought that anything anyone said was either brilliant or hilarious.
While the cast and crew got into the food line and found seats, she stayed outside and paced, looking at the sky.
“Linda, you ready to go up?”
“Pardon?”
“To your cabin.”
“Not now, Seaman.”
“Seaman,” no less. That didn’t sit well.
I stood by, my job now. My mind was very much on private time together. Though we hadn’t touched each other since the attack, we still spent her lunch breaks and every night together in her cabin. I think her mind was on nothing but safety. I knew our time together had a limit, and we had less than forty-eight hours left. I wanted it to end memorably, peacefully, happily. Margaritas in the garden at La Posada. A fine meal. We knew each other well—no awkwardness. Conversations and laughter. Good time together before saying good-bye.
She was antsy about something
, and I was completely in the dark about what.
“Linda, what’s going on?”
“Seaman, I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem fine.”
She gave me a look over her shoulder, distant, but friendly and smiley. Maybe her concussion was still acting up.
“Get the keys to the town car from Julius,” she said.
I ducked into the tent and obeyed orders.
“Let’s drive down to the main road and back,” she said. “I’ll show you where.”
Her giving me directions around Navajoland? That was odd, but we motored along the Oljato Road past the fake street of Tombstone to the wide dirt road, the one that led to Flagstaff. I turned the car around and stopped where she asked me to.
She leaned over and eyeballed the odometer. “Point two,” she said. “All right, now drive to that place where the road curves for the first time. You know where.”
Of course I knew where. Oh, what the hell. I did it.
She studied the odometer again. “Point six,” she said. “Four tenths of a mile. How many thousand feet is that?”
Points. Who cared? “About two thousand,” I said.
She got out of the car and stared east again. “Straight as a string,” she said.
“What’s going on?”
“Oh…” She waved a hand in the air, dismissing me.
I was starting to get annoyed. I was not her Julius Roth. I stepped out and joined her next to the car.
Mike Goulding trotted down to us. I hadn’t seen her coming. “He’s in radio contact,” she said, “and he’s got us visually.”
What on earth?
“There he is!” Linda exclaimed. Her heels bounced up and down.
I followed her eyes and saw the approaching mystery. It was a speck in the sky, maybe an airplane. Yes, definitely an airplane. It made a wide circle to the east, arced back west, and headed straight toward us.
“Go get Mr. Ford,” she said to me. “Quick.”
I ran, as she asked, back to the food tent, and was more puzzled by the moment.
Jack (but I still thought of him as Mr. John) hurried along with me, followed by the regulars at his table. Even he looked excited. He must have given permission for an outsider to visit the set. Now I was getting more interested and less ticked off.
