Tony Hillerman - Leaphorn & Chee 09 - Talking God

by Talking God(lit)

  "They found a fish trap," he said. "Thing's made out of split bamboo by somebody-or-other. They said it had just sort of been pushed up into a passage between two stacks of containers."

  "How big?" Leaphorn asked.

  Rodney was dialing the telephone again. He glanced up at Leaphorn and said: "Big as a body."

  Chapter Eighteen

  ®

  First, Leroy Fleck called his brother. It was something he rarely did. Delmar Fleck had made it very clear that he couldn't afford to have contacts with a convict-particularly one known to be his relative. Delmar's wife answered the telephone. She didn't recognize his voice and Leroy didn't identify himself to her because if he did, he was pretty sure she would hang up on him.

  "Yeah," Delmar said, and Leroy got right to the point.

  "It's me. Leroy. And I got to have some help with Mama. They're kicking her out of the home here in the District and the one I found to move her into wants more advance money down than I can handle."

  "I told you not to call me," Delmar said.

  "I just got to have some help," Leroy said. "I was supposed to get a payment today, but something held it up. Ten thousand dollars. When I get it next week, I'll pay you right back."

  "We been over this before," Delmar said. "I don't make hardly anything at the car lot, and Faye Lynn just gets tips at the beauty shop."

  "If you could just send me two thousand dollars I could come up with the rest. Then next week I'll send it back to you. Western Union." Next week would take care of itself. He would think of something by then. Elkins would have another job for him. Elkins always had jobs for him. And until Elkins came through with something bigger, he'd just have to go on the prowl for a few days.

  "No blood in this turnip," Delmar said. "It's already squeezed. I couldn't raise two thousand dollars if my life depended on it. We got two car payments, and rent, and the credit card, and medical insurance and-"

  "Delmar. Delmar. I just got to have some help. Can you borrow something? Just for a week or so?"

  "We been all over this. The government takes care of people like Mama. Let the government do it."

  "I used to think that, too," Leroy said. "But they don't actually do it. There's no program for people like Mama." Silence on the other end. "And, Delmar, you need to find a way to come and visit with her. It's been years and she's asking about you all the time. She told me she thought the Arabs had you a hostage somewhere. She thinks that to keep her feelings from being hurt. Her mind's not what it used to be. Sometimes she don't even recognize me."

  There was still only silence. Then he heard Delmar's voice, sounding a long ways off, talking to someone. Then he heard a laugh.

  "Delmar!" he shouted. "Delmar!"

  "Sorry," Delmar said. "We got company. But that's my advice. Just call social services. I'd help you if I could, but I'm pressed myself. Got to cut it off now."

  And he cut it off, leaving Fleck standing at the telephone booth. He looked at the telephone, fighting down first the despair and then the anger, trying to think of who else he could call. But there wasn't anyone.

  Fleck kept his reserve money in a child's plastic purse tucked under the spare tire in the trunk of his old Chevy-a secure enough place in a society where thieves were not attracted to dented 1976 sedans. He fished it out now, and headed across town toward the nursing home, counting it while he waited for red lights to turn green.

  He counted three hundreds, twenty-two fifties, eleven twenties, and forty-one tens. With what he had in his billfold it added up to $2,033. He'd see what he could do with that with the Fat Man at the rest home. He didn't like going back there like this. It sure as hell wasn't the way he had it planned, or would plan anything for that matter. He normally would have been smart enough not to make an enemy of a man when you were going to have to ask him a favor. But maybe a combination of paying him and scaring him would work for a little while. Until he could pull something off. He could make a hit out at National Airport. In the men's room. The blade and then off with the billfold. People going on planes always carried money. It would be risky. But he could see no choice. He'd try that, and then work on the tourists around the Capitol Building. That was risky, too. In fact, both places scared him. But he had made up his mind. He would fix something up with the Fat Man to buy a little time and then start collecting enough to get Mama someplace safe and decent.

  The Fat Man wasn't in.

  "He went out to get something. Down to the Seven-Eleven, I think he said," the receptionist told him. "Why don't you just come on back later in the day? Or maybe you better call first." She was looking at the little sack Fleck was carrying, looking suspicious, as if it was some sort of dope. Actually it was red licorice. Mama liked the stuff and Fleck always brought her a supply. The receptionist was some kind of Hispanic-probably Puerto Rican, Fleck guessed. And she looked nervous as well as suspicious while she talked to him. That made Fleck nervous. Maybe she would call the police. Maybe she had heard something the last time he was here when he told the Fat Man he would kill him if he didn't hold on to Mama until he could find her another place. But he hadn't seen her that day, and he'd kept his voice low when he explained things to the fat bastard. Maybe she was around somewhere listening. Maybe she wasn't. There was nothing he could do about it. He didn't have any options left.

  "I'll just go on back there to the parlor and visit with Mama until he gets back," Fleck said.

  "Oh, she's not there anymore," the receptionist said. "She fights with the other ladies all the time. And she hurt poor old Mrs. Endicott again. Twisted her arm."

  Fleck didn't want to hear any more of that kind of talk. He hurried down the hallway to Mama's room.

  Mama was sitting in her wheelchair looking at the little TV Fleck had bought for her, watching some soap opera which Fleck thought might be "The Young and the Restless." They had her tied in the chair, as they did all the old people, and it touched Fleck to see her that way. She was so helpless now. Mama had never been helpless until she'd had those strokes. Mama had always been in charge before then. It made Fleck unhappy when he came to see her. It filled him with a kind of dreary sorrow and made him wish he could get far enough ahead so that he could afford a place somewhere and take care of her himself. And he always started trying to think again how he could do it. But there was simply no way. The way Mama was, he would have to be with her all the time. He couldn't just go off and leave her tied in that chair. And that wouldn't leave him with any way to make a living for them.

  Mama glanced at him when he came through the door. Then she looked back at her television program. She didn't say anything.

  "Hello," Fleck said. "How are you feeling today?"

  Mama didn't look up.

  "I brought you some licorice, Mama," Fleck said. He held out the sack.

  "Put it down on the bed there," Mama said. Sometimes Mama spoke normally, but sometimes it took her a while to form the words-a matter of pitting indomitable will against a recalcitrant, stroke-damaged nervous system. Fleck waited, remembering. He remembered the way Mama used to talk. He remembered the way Mama used to be. Then she would have made short work of the Fat Man.

  "You doing all right today, Mama?" he asked. "Anything I can do for you?"

  Mama still didn't look at him. She stared at the set, where a woman was shouting at a well-dressed man in poorly feigned anger. "I was," Mama said, finally. "People keep coming in and bothering me."

  "I guess I could put a stop to that," Fleck said.

  Mama turned then and looked at him, her eyes absolutely without expression. It occurred to him that maybe it was him she meant. He studied her, wondering if she recognized him. If she did, there was no sign of it. She rarely did in recent years. Well, he would stay and visit anyway. Just keep her company. All her life, as far back as Fleck could remember into his childhood, Mama had had pitifully little of that.

  "That girl there's got on a pretty dress," Fleck said. "I mean the one on TV."

  Mama igno
red him. Poor woman, Fleck thought. Poor, pathetic old woman. He stood beside the open door, examining her profile. She had been a good-sized woman once-maybe 140 pounds or so. Strong and quick and smart as they come. Now she was skinny as a rail and stuck in that wheelchair. She couldn't hardly talk and her mind was not working well.

  "How about me giving you a push?" Fleck asked. "Would you like to go for a ride? It's raining outside but I could push you around inside the building. Give you a little change."

  Mama still stared at the TV. The angry woman on "The Young and the Restless" had left, slamming the door behind her. Now the man was talking on the telephone. Mama hitched herself forward in the chair. "I had a boy once who had a four-door Buick," she said in a clear voice that sounded surprisingly young. "Dark blue and that velvety upholstery on the seats. He took me to Memphis in that."

  "That would have been Delmar's car," Fleck said. "It was a nice one." Mama had talked of it before but Fleck had never seen it. Delmar must have bought it while Fleck was doing his time in Joliet.

  "Delmar is his name, all right," Mama said. "The Arabs got him hostage in Jerusalem or someplace. Otherwise he'd come to see me, Delmar would. He'd take care of me right. He was all man, that one was."

  "I know he would," Fleck said. "Delmar is a good man."

  "Delmar was all man," Mama said, still staring at the TV set. "He wouldn't let nobody treat him like a nigger. Do Delmar and he'd get you right back. He'd make you respect him. You can count on that. That's one thing you always got to do, is get even. If you don't do that they treat you like a goddamn animal. Step right on your neck. Delmar wouldn't let anybody not treat him right."

  "No, Mama, he wouldn't," Fleck said. Actually, as he remembered it, Delmar wasn't much for fighting. He was for keeping out of the way of trouble.

  Mama looked at him, eyes hostile. "You talk like you know Delmar."

  "Yes, Mama. I do. I'm Leroy. I'm Delmar's brother."

  Mama snorted. "No you ain't. Delmar only had one brother. He ended up a damn jailbird."

  The room smelled stale to Leroy. He smelled something that might have been spoiled food, and dust and the acidic odor of dried urine. Poor old lady, he thought. He blinked, rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes.

  "I think it would be nice for you to get out in the halls at least. Get out of this room a little bit. See something different just for a change."

  "I wouldn't be in here at all if the Arabs hadn't got to Delmar. He'd have me someplace nice."

  "I know he would," Fleck said. "I know he'd come to visit you if he could."

  "I had two boys, actually," Mama said. "But the other one he turned out jailbird. Never amounted to shit."

  It was just then that Leroy Fleck heard the cop. He couldn't make out the words but he recognized the tone. He strained to listen.

  But Mama was still talking. "They said that one turned fairy up there in the prison. He let them use him like a girl."

  Leroy Fleck leaned out into the hallway, partly to see if the voice which sounded like a cop really was a cop. It was. He was standing beside the receptionist and she was pointing down the hall. She was pointing right at Leroy Fleck.

  Elkins had always told him he was naturally fast. He could think fast and he could move like lightning. "It's partly in your mind, and it's partly in your reflexes," Elkins had told him. "We can get your muscles built up, build up your strength, by pumping iron. But anybody can do that. That quickness, that's something you gotta be born with. That's where you got the edge if you know how to use it."

  He used it now. He knew instantly that he could not let himself be arrested. Absolutely not. Maybe he'd come clear on the Santillanes affair. Probably not. Why else were those two Indian-looking cops dogging him? But even if they didn't make him on that one, as soon as they matched his prints, they'd make him on something else. He'd worked for Elkins on too many jobs, and been on the prowl in too many airports and nightclubs, to ever let himself be arrested. He'd survived only by being careful not to be. But now the Fat Man, that fat bastard, had put an end to that. He'd have to get even with the Fat Man. But there was no time to think of that now. Within what was left of the same second, Fleck had decided how he would talk his way out of this. It would help that the Fat Man wasn't here to press his case. The receptionist apparently had orders to call the law anytime he showed up, but she was minimum-wage help. She wouldn't care what happened next.

  Fleck moved back into the room and sat on the bed. "Mama," he said softly, "you're going to have some more company in just a minute. It's a policeman. I want to ask you to just keep calm and be polite."

  "Policeman," Mama said. She spit on the floor by the television set.

  "It's important to me, Mama," Fleck said. "It's awful important."

  And then the policeman was at the door, looking in.

  "You Dick Pfaff?"

  It took Fleck the blink of an eye to remember that was the name he'd used when he'd checked Mama in here.

  Fleck stood. "Yes sir," he said. "And this here is my Mama."

  The policeman was young. He had smooth, pale skin and a close-cropped blond mustache. He nodded to Mama. She stared at him. Where was his partner? Fleck wondered. He would be the old hand on this team. If Fleck was lucky, the partner would be resting out in the patrol car, letting the rookie handle this pissant, nothing little complaint. If they thought there was any risk at all of it being serious they would both be in here. In fact, Fleck suspected the police rules probably required it. Somebody was goofing off.

  "We have a complaint that you caused a disturbance here," the policeman said. "We have a statement that you threatened to kill the manager."

  Fleck produced a self -deprecatory laugh. "I'm ashamed of that. That's the main reason I came today-to apologize for the way I behaved." As he said it, Fleck became aware that Mama was no longer watching the television set. Mama was watching him.

  "That's a pretty serious offense," the officer said. "Telling a man you're going to kill him."

  "I doubt if I really quite said that," Fleck said. "But you notice how it smells in here? My Mama here, she hadn't been properly cleaned up. She had bedsores and all that and I just lost my temper. I had told him about it before."

  Clearly the policeman was aware of the smell. Fleck could tell from his face that he'd switched from cautiously hostile to slightly sympathetic.

  "If he's got back yet, I'll go out there and apologize to him. I'm sorry for whatever I said. Just got sore about the way they was treating Mama here."

  The policeman nodded. "I don't think he's here anyway," he said. "That woman said he was off somewhere. I'll just check you for weapons." He grinned at Fleck. "If you didn't come in here armed, I'd say it's a pretty good argument on your side since he's about four times your size."

  "Yes sir," Fleck said. He resisted the prison-learned instinct to spread his legs and raise his arms. The cop would never find his shank, which was in the slot he'd made for it inside his boot, but getting into the shakedown stance would tip off even this rookie that he was dealing with an ex-con.

  "What do you want me to do?" Fleck asked.

  "Just turn around. And then lock your hands over the back of your neck," the policeman said.

  "Get down-" Mama began. Then it broke off into a sort of incoherent stammer. But she kept trying to talk and Fleck looked away from the policeman and looked at her instead. Her face was filled with an expression of such fierce contempt that it took Leroy Fleck back to his childhood.

  "-and lick his goddamn shoes," Mama said.

  He had made his decision even before she forced it out. "Now, Mama," he said, and bending down, he slid the blade out of his boot into his palm. He gripped it flat-side horizontal and as he stepped toward the policeman he was saying: "Mama had a stroke-" and with the word "stroke" the blade was driving through the uniform shirt.

  It sank between the policeman's ribs with the full force of Fleck's weightlifter muscles behind it. And there, in that terribly
vulnerable territory Elkins had called "behind the bone," Fleck's weightlifter's wrist flicked it, and flicked it and flicked it. Cutting artery. Cutting heart. The officer's mouth opened, showing white, even teeth below the yellow mustache. He made a kind of a sound, but not very loud because the shock was already killing him. It was hardly audible above the shouting that was going on in "The Young and the Restless."

  Fleck released the knife handle, grabbed the policeman's shoulders, and lowered him to his knees. He removed the knife and wiped it on the uniform shirt. (If you do it all properly, Elkins would say, the bleeding is mostly inside. No blood all over you.) Then Fleck let the body slide to the floor. Face down. He put the knife back in his boot and turned toward Mama. He intended to say something but he didn't know what. His mind wasn't working right.