Tony Hillerman - Leaphorn & Chee 09 - Talking God

by Talking God(lit)

  They went up the staff elevator to the sixth floor, to Highhawk's airless cubicle of an office. He punched the proper information into his computer terminal and received, in return, a jumble of numbers and letters.

  "This tells us the hallway, the room, the corridor in the room, the shelf in the corridor, and the number of the bin it's in," Highhawk said. He punched another set of keys and waited.

  "Now it tells us that it is out of inventory and being worked on. Or something."

  He turned off the computer, glanced at Chee, looked thoughtful.

  He knows where it is, Chee thought. He knew from the beginning. He's deciding whether to tell me.

  "It should be in the conservation lab," Highhawk said. "Let's go take a look."

  The telephone rang.

  Highhawk looked at it, and at Chee.

  It rang again. Highhawk picked it up. "Highhawk," he said.

  And then: "I can't right now. I have a guest."

  He listened, glanced at Chee. "No, I couldn't make the damn thing work," Highhawk said. "I'm no good with that stuff." He listened.

  "I tried that. It didn't turn on." Listened again. "Look. You're coming down anyway. I'll leave it for you to fix." Listened. "No. That's a little early. Too much traffic then." And finally: "Make it nine thirty then. And remember it's the Twelfth Street entrance."

  Highhawk listened, and hung up.

  "Let's go," he said to Chee.

  Highhawk made his limping way down a seemingly endless corridor. It was lined on both sides with higher-than-head stacks of wooden cases. The cases were numbered. Some were sealed with paper stickers. Most wore tags reading CAUTION: INVENTORIED MATERIALS or CAUTION: UNINVENTORIED MATERIALS.

  "What's in all this?" Chee asked, waving.

  "You name it," Highhawk said. "I think in here it's mostly early agricultural stuff. Tools, churns, hoes, you know. Up ahead we have bones."

  "The skeletons you wanted returned?"

  "Want returned," Highhawk said. "Still. We've got more than eighteen thousand skeletons boxed up in this attic. Eighteen goddamn thousand Native American skeletons in the museum's so-called research collection."

  "Wow," Chee said. He would have guessed maybe four or five hundred.

  "How about white skeletons?"

  "Maybe twenty thousand black, white, and so forth," Highhawk said. "But since the white-eyes outnumber the redskins in this country about two hundred to one, to reach parity I have to dig up three-point-six million white skeletons and stack them in here. That is, if the scientists are really into studying old bones-which I doubt."

  Old bones was not a subject which appealed to Chee's traditional Navajo nature. Corpses were not a subject for polite discussion. The knowledge that he was sharing a corridor with thousands of the dead made Chee uneasy. He wanted to change the subject. He wanted to ask Highhawk about the telephone conversation. What was he trying to fix? What was it that wouldn't turn on? Who was he meeting at nine thirty? But it was none of his business and Highhawk would tell him so or evade the question.

  "Why the seals?" he asked instead, pointing.

  Highhawk laughed. "The Republicans used the main gallery for their big inaugural ball," Highhawk said. "About a thousand Secret Service and FBI types came swarming in here in advance to make sure of security." The memory had converted Highhawk's bitterness to high good humor. His laugh turned into a chortle.

  "They'd unlock each case, poke around inside to make sure Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't hiding in there, and then lock it up again and stick on the seal so nobody could sneak in later."

  "My God," Chee exclaimed, struck by a sudden thought. "How many keys would it take to unlock all of these?"

  Highhawk laughed. "You're not dealing with the world's heaviest key ring here," he said. "Just one key, or rather copies of the same key, fits all these box locks. They're not intended to keep people from stealing stuff. Who'd want to steal a section of a Civil War rowboat, for example? It's to help with inventory control. You want in one of these cases, you go to the appropriate office and get the key off a hook by the desk and sign for it. Anyway, it all worried the Secret Service to death. About eighty million artifacts in this building, and maybe a hundred thousand of them could be used to kill somebody. So they wanted everything tied down."

  "I guess it worked. Nobody got shot."

  "Or harpooned, or crossbowed, or beaned with a charro lasso, or speared, or arrowed, or knitting needled, or war clubbed," Highhawk added. "They wanted all that stuff to come out too. Anything that might be a weapon, from Cheyenne metate stones to Eskimo whale-skinning knives. It was quite an argument."

  Highhawk did an abrupt turn through a doorway into a long, bright, cluttered room lit by rows of fluorescent tubes.

  "The conservatory lab," he said, "the repair shop for decaying cannonballs, frayed buggy whips, historic false teeth, and so forth, including-if the computer was right-one Tano War God."

  He stopped beside one of the long tables which occupied the center of the room, rummaged briefly, extracted a cardboard box. From it he pulled a crudely carved wooden form.

  He held it up for Chee to inspect. It was shaped from a large root, which gave it a bent and twisted shape. Bedraggled feathers decorated it and its face stared back at Chee with the same look of malice that he remembered on the fetish he'd seen in Highhawk's office. Was it the same fetish? Maybe. He couldn't be sure.

  "This is what the shouting's about," he said. "The symbol of one of the Tano Twin War Gods."

  "Has somebody been working on it?" Chee asked. "Is that why it's here?"

  Highhawk nodded. He looked up at Chee. "Where did you hear the Pueblo was asking for it back?"

  "I can't remember," Chee said. "Maybe there was something in the Albuquerque Journal about it." He shrugged. "Or maybe I'm getting it confused with the Zuni War God. The one the Zunis finally got back from the Denver Museum."

  Highhawk laid the fetish gently back in the box. "Anyway, I guess that when the museum got the word that the Pueblo was asking about it, somebody over in the Castle sent a memo over. They wanted to know if we actually had such a thing. And if we did have it, they wanted to make damn sure it was properly cared for. No termites, moss, dry rot, anything like that. That would be very bad public relations." Highhawk grinned at Chee. "Folks in the Castle can't stand a bad press."

  "Castle?"

  "The original ugly old building with the towers and battlements and all," Highhawk explained. "It sort of looks like a castle and that's where the top brass has offices." The thought of this wiped away Highhawk's good humor. "They get paid big money to come up with reasons why the museum needs eighteen thousand stolen skeletons. And this-" He tapped the fetish. "-this stolen sacred object."

  He handed it to Chee.

  It was heavier than he'd expected. Perhaps the root was from some tree harder than the cotton-wood. It looked old. How old? he asked himself. Three hundred years? Three thousand? Or maybe thirty. He knew no way to judge. But certainly nothing about it looked raw or new.

  Highhawk was glancing at his watch. Chee handed him the fetish. "Interesting," he said. "There's a couple of things I want to ask you about."

  "Tell you what," Highhawk said. "I have a thing I have to do. We'll go back by my office and you wait there and I'll be right back. This is going to take-" He thought. "-maybe ten, fifteen minutes."

  Chee glanced at his own watch when Highhawk dropped him at the office. It was nine twenty-five. He sat beside Highhawk's desk, heels on the wastebasket, relaxing. He was tired and he hadn't realized it. A long day, full of walking, full of disappointments. What would he be able to tell Janet Pete that Janet Pete didn't already know? He could tell her of Highhawk's coyness about the fetish. Obviously it was Highhawk who had brought the War God up to the conservancy lab to work on it. Obviously he'd known exactly where to find it. Obviously he didn't want Chee to know of his interest in the thing.

  Chee yawned, and stretched, and rose stiffly from his chair to prowl t
he office. A framed certificate on the wall declared that his host had successfully completed studies in anthropological conservation and restoration at the London Institute of Archaeology. Another certified his completion with honors of a materials conservation graduate program at George Washington University. Still another recognized his contribution to a seminar on "Conservation Implications of the Structure, Reactivity, Deterioration, and Modification of Proteinaceous Artifact Material" for the American Institute of Archaeology

  Chee was looking for something to read and thinking that Highhawk's few minutes had stretched a bit when he heard the sounds-a sharp report, a clatter of miscellaneous noises with what might have been a yell mixed in. It was an unpleasant noise and it stopped Chee cold. He caught his breath, listening. Whatever it was ended as abruptly as it had started. He walked to the door and looked up and down the hallway, listening. The immense sixth floor of the Museum of Natural History was as silent as a cave. The noise had come from his right. Chee walked down the hallway in that direction, slowly, soundlessly. He stopped at a closed door, gripped the knob, tested it. Locked. He put his ear to the panel and heard nothing but the sound his own blood made moving through his arteries. He moved down the hallway, conscious of the rows of wooden bins through which he walked, of the smells, of dust, of old things decaying. Then he stopped again and stood absolutely still, listening. He heard nothing but ringing silence and, after a moment, what might have been an elevator descending in another part of the building.

  Then steps. Rapid steps. From ahead and to the left. Chee hurried to the corridor corner ahead, looked around it. It was empty. Simply another narrow pathway between deep stacks of numbered bins. He listened again. Where had the hurrier gone? What had caused those odd noises? Chee had no idea which way to look. He simply stood, leaning against a bin, and listened. Silence rang in his ears. Whoever, whatever, had made the noise had gone away.

  He walked back to Highhawk's office, suppressing an urge to look back, controlling an urge to hurry. And when he reached it, he closed the door firmly behind him and moved his chair against the wall so that it faced the door. When he sat in it he suddenly felt very foolish. The noise would have some perfectly normal explanation. Something had fallen. Someone had dropped something heavy.

  He resumed his explorations of the documents on Highhawk's untidy desk, looking for something interesting. They tended toward administrative documents and technical material. He selected a photocopy of a report entitled

  ETHICAL AND PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN CONSERVING ETHNOGRAPHIC MUSEUM OBJECTS

  and settled down to read it.

  It was surprisingly interesting-some twenty-five pages full of information and ideas mostly new to Chee. He read it carefully and slowly, stopping now and then to listen. Finally he put it back on the desk, put his heels back on the wastebasket, and thought about Mary Landon, and then about Janet Pete, and then about Highhawk. He glanced at his watch. After ten. Highhawk had been gone more than thirty minutes. He walked to the door and looked up and down the corridor. Total emptiness. Total silence. He sat again in the chair, feet on the floor, remembering exactly what Highhawk had said. He'd said wait here a few minutes. Ten or fifteen.

  Chee got his hat and went out into the corridor, turning off the light and closing the door behind him. He found his way through the labyrinth of corridors to the elevator. He pushed the button and heard it laboring its way upward. Highhawk obviously had not returned by this route. On the ground floor he found his way to the Twelfth Street exit. There had been a security guard there when he came in, a woman who had spoken to Highhawk. She would know if he'd left the building. But the woman wasn't there. No one was guarding the exit door.

  Chee felt a sudden irrational urge to get out of this building and under the sky. He pushed the door open and hurried down the steps. The cold, misty air felt wonderful on his face. But where was Highhawk? He remembered the last words Highhawk had said as he left him at Highhawk's office:

  "I'll be right back."

  Chapter Fifteen

  ®

  Leaphorn called Kennedy from his hotel room and caught him at home.

  "I've got him," Leaphorn said. "His name is Elogio Santillanes. But I need you to get a fingerprint check made and see if the Bureau has anything on him."

  "Who?" Kennedy said. He sounded sleepy. "What are you talking about?"

  "The man beside the tracks. Remember? The one you got me out into the weather to take a look at."

  "Oh," Kennedy said. "Yeah. Santillanes, you say. A local Hispano then, after all. How'd you get a make on him?"

  Leaphorn explained it all, from St. Germain to Perez to the prescription number, including the little red-haired man who might (or might not) be watching the Santillanes apartment.

  "Nice to be lucky," Kennedy said. "Where the hell you calling from? You in Washington now?"

  Leaphorn gave him the name of his hotel. "I'm going to stay here-or at least I'll be here for message purposes. Are you going to call Washington?"

  "Why not?" Kennedy said.

  "Would you ask 'em to let me know what they find out? And since they probably won't do it, would you call me as soon as they call you back?"

  "Why not?" Kennedy said. "You going to stick around there until we know something?"

  "Why not?" Leaphorn said. "It shouldn't take long with the name. Either they have prints on him or they don't."

  It didn't take long. Leaphorn watched the late news. He went out for a walk in what had now transformed itself into a fine, damp, cold mist. He bought an edition of tomorrow's Washington Post and read it in bed. He woke late, had breakfast in the hotel coffee shop, and found his telephone ringing when he got back to the room.

  It was Kennedy.

  "Bingo," Kennedy said. "I am sort of a hero with the Bureau this morning-which will last until about sundown. Your Elogio Santillanes was in the Bureau print files. He was one of the relatively few surviving leaders of the substantially less than loyal left-wing opposition to the Pinochet regime in Chile."

  "Well," Leaphorn said. "That's interesting." But what the devil did it mean? What would call a Chilean politician to Gallup, New Mexico? What would arouse in such a man an interest in a Night Chant somewhere out beyond Lower Greasewood?

  "They wondered what had happened to him," Kennedy was saying. "He wasn't exactly under close surveillance, but the Bureau tries to keep an eye on such folks. It tries to keep track of them. Especially this bunch because of that car bombing awhile back. You remember about that?"

  "Very vaguely. Was it Chilean?"

  "It was. One of this bunch that Santillanes belongs to got blown sky-high over on Sheridan Circle, near where the very important people live. The Chilean embassy crowd didn't make enough effort to hide their tracks and the Department of State declared a bunch of them persona non grata and sent them home. There was a big protest to Chile, human rights complaints, the whole nine yards. Terribly bad publicity for the Pinochet gang. Anyway after that the Bureau seems to have kept an eye on them. And things cooled down."

  "Until now," Leaphorn said.

  "It looks to me like Pinochet's thugs waited until they figured they wouldn't get caught at it," Kennedy said. "But how do I know?"

  "That would explain all the effort to keep Santillanes from being identified."

  "It would," Kennedy agreed. "If there's no identification, there's no static from the Department of State."

  "Did you ask your people here to give me a call? Did you tell them about Santillanes' neighbor? And did you pass along what I told you about Henry Highhawk's name being in Santillanes' notebook?"

  "Yes, I told them about the little man in apartment two, and, yes, I mentioned Henry Highhawk, and, yes, I asked them to give Joe Leaphorn a call. Have they called?"

  "Of course not," Leaphorn said.

  Kennedy laughed. "Old J. Edgar's dead, but nothing ever changes."

  But they did call. Leaphorn had hardly hung up when he heard knocking at his door.r />
  Two men waited in the hall. Even in Washington, where every male-to Leaphorn's casual eye-dressed exactly like every other male, these two were obviously Bureau men.

  "Come in," Leaphorn said, glancing at the identification each man was now holding out for inspection, "I've been sort of expecting you."

  He introduced himself. Their names were Dillon and Akron, both being blond, Dillon being bigger and older and in charge.

  "Your name is Leaphorn? That right?" Dillon said, glancing in his notebook. "You have identification?"

  Leaphorn produced his folder.

  Dillon compared Leaphorn's face with the picture. He examined the credentials. Nothing in his expression suggested he was impressed by either.

  "A lieutenant in the Navajo Tribal Police?"