Tony Hillerman - Leaphorn & Chee 06 - The Ghostway

by The Ghostway(lit)

  And then he told them the motive of this affair-a matter of not paying one's gambling debts. Leonard had been a fellow who didn't believe kneecaps still got broken, but Leonard knew better now, and Leonard was paying up in full, with interest.

  Finally, Vaggan added, Leonard had left his house open and the lights on, and if they hurried and got there before the Beverly Hills police got the word, they would find something interesting.

  Chapter 14

  Chee emerged from sleep abruptly, as was his way, aware first of the alien sheet against his chin, the alien smells, the alien darkness. Then he clicked into place. Los Angeles. A room in Motel 6, West Hollywood. He looked at his watch. Not quite five thirty. The sound of the wind, which had troubled his sleep throughout the night, had diminished now. Chee yawned and stretched. No reason to get up. He had come with a single lead to finding Begay and Margaret Billy Sosi, the Gorman address. That had led nowhere. Beyond that he had nothing but the chance of picking up some trace of the Gorman family or the Turkey Clan. He and Shaw had tried the Los Angeles County Native America Center with no luck at all. The woman who seemed to be in charge was an Eastern Indian, a Seminole, Chee guessed, or Cherokee, or Choctaw, or something like that. Certainly not a Navajo, or any of the southwestern tribes whose facial characteristics were familiar to Chee.

  Nor was she particularly helpful. The notion of clans seemed strange to her, and the address of the three Navajos she finally managed to come up with had been dead ends. One was a middle-aged woman of the Standing Rock People, born for the Salt Cedars, another was a younger woman, a Many Goats and Streams Come Together Navajo, and the third, incredible as it seemed to Chee, was a young man who seemed to have no knowledge of his clan relationships. The project had taken hour after hour of fighting traffic on the freeways through the endless sprawl of Los Angeles, hunting through the evening darkness and into the night and getting nothing from it but a list of names of other Navajos who might know somebody in the diminished circle of Ashie Begay's diminished clan. Probably, Chee knew, they wouldn't.

  Chee got up and took a shower with the water on low to avoid disturbing his motel neighbors. The shorts and socks he'd rinsed the night before were still damp, reminding him that even with the dry Santa Ana blowing all night there was a lot more humidity on the coast than in the high country. He sat in the clammy shorts, pulling on clinging wet socks, noticing that the light wind he had awakened to had faded into a calm. That meant the Pacific low-pressure area into which the wind had been blowing had moved inland. It would be a day of good weather, he thought, and the thought reminded him of how impressed Mary Landon had been (or pretended to be-it didn't really matter) with his grasp of weather patterns.

  "Just like the stereotype," she'd said, smiling at him. "Noble Savage Understands the Elements."

  "Just like common sense," Chee had told her. "Farmers and ranchers and people who work outside, like surveying crews and tribal cops, pay attention to the weather news. We watch Bill Eisenhood on Channel Four, and he tells us what the jet stream is doing and shows us the hundred-and-fifty-millibar map."

  But he didn't want to think about Mary Landon. He opened the blinds and looked out into the gray dawn light. Still air. Street empty except for a black man in blue coveralls standing at a bus stop. The world of Mary Landon. A row of signs proclaiming what could be had for money stretching up the decrepit infinity of the West Hollywood street. Chee remembered what he'd seen on Sunset Boulevard last night on his Navajo hunt with Shaw. The whores waiting on the corners, huddling against the wind. Chee had seen whores before. Gallup had them, and Albuquerque's Central Avenue swarmed with them in State Fair season. But many of these were simply children. He commented on that to Shaw, surprised. Shaw had merely grunted. "Started a few years ago," he said. "Maybe as early as the late sixties. We don't try to buck it any more." This, too, was part of Mary Landon's world. Not that the Dinee had no prostitution. It went all the way back to the story of their origins in the underworld. The woman's sexuality was recognized as having monetary value in their marriage traditions. A man who had intercourse with a woman outside of wedlock was expected to pay the woman's family, and to fail to do so was akin to theft. But not children. Never children. And never anything as dismal as he'd seen last night on Sunset.

  The black man at the bus stop put his hand in his rear pocket and scratched his rump. Watching, Chee became aware that his own rump was itching. He scratched, and made himself aware of his hypocrisy.

  All alike under the skin, he thought, in every important way, despite my Navajo superiority. We want to eat, to sleep, to copulate and reproduce our genes, to be warm and dry and safe against tomorrow. Those are the important things, so what's my hang-up?

  "What's your hang-up, Jim Chee?" Mary Landon had asked him. She had been sitting against the passenger door of his pickup, as far from him as the horizon. "What gives you the right to be so superior?" All of her was in darkness except for the little moonlight falling on her knees through the windshield.

  And he had said something about not being superior, but merely making a comparison. Having a telephone is good. So is having space to move around in, and relatives around you. "But schools," she'd said. "We want our children to get good educations." And he'd said, "What's so wrong with the one where you're teaching?" and she'd said, "You know what's wrong," and he'd said.

  Chee went for breakfast to a Denny's down the street, putting Mary Landon out of his mind by escaping into the problem presented by Margaret Sosi. This puzzle, while it defied solution, improved his appetite. He ordered beef stew.

  The waitress looked tired. "You just getting off work?" she asked, jotting the order on her pad.

  "Just going to work," Chee said.

  She looked at him. "Beef stew for breakfast?"

  Mexican, Chee thought, but from what Shaw had said she probably wasn't. Not in this part of Los Angeles. She must be a Filipino. "It's what you get used to," Chee said. "I didn't grow up on bacon and eggs. Or pancakes."

  The woman's indifference vanished. "Burritos," she said. "Refritos folded in a blue corn tortilla." Smiling.

  "Fried bread and mutton," Chee said, returning the grin. "Down with the Anglos and their Egg McMuffin." And so much for Shaw's generalizations about his home territory. The only people Chee had ever known who would willingly eat refried beans wrapped in a tortilla were Mexicans. Chee doubted if Filipinos would share any such culinary aberration.

  He ate his stew, which had very little meat in it. Maybe this woman was the only Spanish speaker in West Hollywood who wasn't from the Philippines, but Chee doubted it. Even if she was, she represented the flaw in generalizing about people. On the Big Reservation, where people were scarce and scattered, one tended to know people as individuals and there was no reason to lump them into categories. Shaw had a different problem with the swarming masses in his jurisdiction. People in West Hollywood were Koreans or Filipinos, or some other category that could be labeled.

  Just like people in old folks' homes were senile. Policemen wouldn't bother questioning senile people. Chee hurried through his stew.

  The legend on the door of the Silver Threads Rest Home declared that visiting hours were from 2 to 4 p.m. Chee glanced at his watch. It was not yet 8 a.m. He didn't bother to ring the bell. He walked back to the sidewalk and began strolling along the chain-link fence. On his third circuit, four old people had appeared on the east-facing porch, sitting in their mute and motionless row in their immobile wheelchairs. While Chee strolled, a red-faced boy wearing a white smock backed through the doorway with a fifth wheelchair in tow. It held a frail woman wearing thick-lensed glasses. Mr. Berger and his aluminum walking frame had not appeared. Chee continued his circumnavigation, turning up the alley and confirming that residents of the nursing home had a fine view of the apartments where the late Albert Gorman had lived-from the porch or from the lawn. On the next circuit, Berger appeared.

  As Chee rounded the corner that brought him past the east porch,
the old man was shuffling his way toward the fence, moving the walker, leaning on it, then bringing his legs along. Chee stopped at the fence at the point for which Berger was aiming. He waited, turning his back to the fence and to the old man's struggle. Be hind him he could hear Berger's panting breath.

  "Sons a bitches," the man was saying. Describing, Chee guessed, either the nursing home staff or his own recalcitrant legs. Chee heard Berger place the walker beside the fence and sigh and grunt as he dragged his legs under him. Only then did he turn.

  "Good to see you, Mr. Berger," Chee said. "I was hoping I wouldn't have to wait for visiting hours."

  "Coming to see." The surprise was in the tone before Berger's tongue balked at the rest of it. His face twisted with the struggle, turning slightly red.

  "I wanted to talk to you some more about Gorman," Chee said. "I remember you asked me if he was in trouble, and as a matter of fact he was in very deep trouble, so I thought maybe you had some idea of what was going on." Chee was careful not to phrase it as more than an implied question.

  Mr. Berger opened his mouth slightly. Made a wry expression.

  "He might have been in worse trouble than he knew. Somebody followed him from here to Shiprock. In New Mexico. On the Navajo Reservation. They shot each other, Gorman and this guy. Gorman killed the man. And then Gorman died himself."

  Berger looked down at his hands, gripping the metal frame of the walker. He shook his head.

  "We don't know why anyone would have wanted to kill Gorman," Chee said. "Doesn't seem to be any reason for it. Did Gorman tell you anything that would help?"

  Berger's white head rose. He looked at Chee, drew a deep and careful breath, closed his eyes, concentrated.

  "Man came," he said.

  Chee waited.

  Berger struggled, gave up. "Shit," Berger said.

  "Would it help if I fill in the gaps? I'm going to guess at some of it. And if I'm wrong you shake your head and I'll stop. Or I'll try another guess."

  Berger nodded.

  "A man came to see Gorman, here at the apartment."

  Berger nodded.

  "The day before Gorman left for New Mexico?"

  Berger took his hands from the walker, held them about a foot apart, moved them together.

  "Less than that," Chee said. "The night before Gorman left."

  Berger nodded.

  "You saw him?"

  Berger nodded. He pointed to Gorman's apartment. Then indicated height and breadth.

  "A big man," Chee said. "Very big?"

  Berger agreed.

  "How old?"

  Berger struggled with that. Chee held up his hands, flashed ten fingers, another ten, stopped. Berger signaled thirty, hesitated, added ten.

  "Maybe forty," Chee said. "Another Navajo?"

  Berger canceled that, pointing to his own hair.

  "White," Chee said. "Blond?"

  Berger nodded.

  "A big blond man came here just before Gorman left for New Mexico," Chee said. Lerner, he was thinking, was neither big nor blond. "Had you seen him before?"

  Berger had.

  "Often?"

  Berger held up two fingers.

  "They talked?" Chee had begun wondering where this was taking him. What could Berger know that would be useful?

  Berger had taken his hands from the walker. His fingers, twisted and trembling, became two men standing slightly apart. Wagging fingers indicated one man talking, then the other man talking. Then the two hands moved together, parallel, to Berger's left. He stopped them. His lips struggled with an impossible word. "Car," he said.

  "They walked together to a car after talking. The blond man's car?"

  Berger nodded, pleased. His hands resumed their walk, stopped. Suddenly the right hand attacked the left, snatched it, bent it. Berger looked at Chee, awaiting the question.

  Chee frowned. "The blond man attacked Gorman?"

  Berger denied it.

  "Gorman attacked the blond man?"

  Berger agreed. He struggled for words, excited.

  Chee bit back a question. "Interesting," he said, smiling at Berger, giving him time. He had an idea. He tapped Berger's right hand. "This is Blond," he said, "and the left hand is Gorman. Okay?"

  Berger grasped his right hand with his left, began to enact a struggle. Then he stopped, thinking. He grasped an imaginary doorknob, opened the imaginary door, watching to see if Chee was with him.

  "One of them opened the car door? The blond?"

  Berger agreed. He held his left hand with his right, released it, then pantomimed, fiercely, the slamming of the door. He clutched the injured finger, squirming and grimacing in mock pain.

  "Gorman slammed the door on the blond man's finger," Chee said. Berger nodded. He was a dignified man, and all this play-acting was embarrassing for him. "That would suggest that Gorman wasn't going to the car willingly. Right? You were standing about here, watching?" Chee laughed. "And wondering what the hell was going on, I'll bet."

  "Exactly," Berger said, clearly and distinctly. "Then Gorman ran." He motioned past the fence, up the alley, a gesture that caused Gorman to vanish.

  "And the blond man?"

  "Sat," Berger said. "Just a min." He couldn't finish the word.

  "And then I guess he drove away."

  Berger nodded.

  "You have any idea about all this?"

  Berger nodded affirmatively. They looked at each other, stymied.

  "Any luck writing?" Chee asked.

  Berger held up his hands. They trembled. Berger controlled them. They trembled again.

  "Well," Chee said, "we'll figure out a way."

  "He came," Berger said, pointing to the gravel where Chee was standing. "Talked."

  "Gorman. About the trouble he was in."

  Berger tried to speak. Tried again. Hit the walker fiercely with a palsied fist. "Shit," he said.

  "What did Gorman do for a living?"

  "Stole cars," Berger said.

  That surprised Chee. Why would Gorman tell Berger that? But why not? A new dimension of Albert Gorman opened. One lonely man meeting another beside a fence. Berger's potential importance in this affair clicked upward. Frail, bony, pale, he leaned on the walker frame, trying to form another word, his blue eyes intense with the concentration.

  Chee waited. The woman whose son was coming to see her had posted her wheelchair down the fence. Now she rolled it across the parched, hard-packed lawn toward them. She noticed Chee watching her and turned the wheelchair abruptly into the fence. "He's coming," she said to no one in particular.

  "Gorman stole cars," Chee said. "And the man he stole them for-the man who paid him-got indicted by the federal grand jury. Maybe the reason he went to New Mexico, and the reason somebody followed to shoot him, was because he was going to be a witness against his boss. Maybe the boss."

  But Berger was denying that, shaking his head.

  "You don't think so?"

  Berger didn't. Emphatically.

  "He talked to you about that, then?"

  Berger agreed. Waved that subject off. Tried to form a word. "Not go," he managed finally. His mouth worked to say more, but couldn't. "Shit," he said.

  "Not go?" Chee repeated. He didn't understand that.

  Berger was still trying to find words. He couldn't. He shrugged, slumped, looked ashamed.

  "He showed him a picture." The words came from the woman in the wheelchair. She was looking out through the fence, and Chee didn't realize that the statement had anything to do with Berger until he saw the old man was nodding eagerly.

  "Gorman showed Mr. Berger a picture?" he asked.

  "That Indian showed that fella you're talking to there a picture," the woman said. She pointed at Berger. "Like a postcard."

  "Ah," Chee said. The photograph again. Why was it so important? It didn't surprise him to see the woman's senility fall away. It would come again just as quickly. Chee had grown up surrounded by the old of his family, learning from them, watch
ing them grow wise, and ill, and die. This end of the human existence had no more mystery for him than its beginning.

  "Picture," Berger said. "His brother."

  "Was it a picture of an aluminum trailer with a man standing by it?"

  It was.

  "And Gorman said it was from his brother?"

  Berger nodded again.

  "I don't know what you meant when you said 'Not go.' I'm confused because we know Gorman went. Was it that Gorman had decided not to go and then changed his mind?"