Tony Hillerman - Leaphorn & Chee 09 - Talking God

by Talking God(lit)

  Silence. The tape ran its brief miniature-recorder course and clicked off. Rodney pushed the REWIND button. He looked at Chee. "Quite an argument."

  Chee nodded. "Of course there's another side to it. An earlier generation of anthropologists dug up most of those bones. And the museum has given a few of them back. I think it sent sixteen skeletons to the Blackfoot Tribe awhile ago, and it says it will return bones if they were stolen from regular cemeteries or if you can prove a family connection."

  Rodney laughed. "Get those skeletons in the lineup," he said. "Get the kinfolks in and see if they can pick their grannie out from somebody's auntie." About a millisecond before he ended that jest, Rodney's expression shifted from amused to abashed. In the present company, maybe this was no laughing matter. "Sorry," Rodney said. "I wasn't thinking."

  Now Chee looked amused. "We Navajos aren't into this corpse fetish business," he said. "Our metaphysics turns on life, the living. The dead we put behind us. We avoid old bones. You won't find Navajos asking for the return of their stolen skeletons."

  It was now Leaphorn's turn to look amused. "As a matter of fact, we are. The Navajo Tribe is asking the museum to send us our skeletons, if the museum has any of them. I think somebody in the tribal bureaucracy decided it was a chance to make a political point. A little one-upmanship on Washington."

  "Any reason to hear this again?" Rodney asked. He slipped the recorder into an evidence bag, sealed it, leaned heavily against the edge of the table, and sighed. He looked tired, Chee thought, and unhappy.

  "I don't enjoy being involved in things I don't understand," Rodney said. "I don't have the slightest goddamn idea why somebody killed this Highhawk bird, or whether it ties in with that guard being killed, or whether this tape has a damned thing to do with anything. That tape sounds like the Smithsonian Museum might have a motive to knock him off." Rodney rubbed the back of a hand across his forehead and made a wry face. "But I gather that museums tend to wait until you're dead and then go after your skeleton. So I'd guess that tape doesn't have much to do with this. And-"

  "I'd guess it does," Chee said.

  Leaphorn studied him. He nodded, agreeing. "How?"

  "I haven't thought it through," Chee said. "But think about it a minute. Highhawk goes to a lot of trouble to get to that Yeibichai to make this tape." He glanced at Leaphorn. "He wrote to Old Lady Tsosie, didn't he? He'd have to find a way to run down her address."

  "She was in that big Navajo Reservation article National Geographic ran," Leaphorn said. "That's where he got her name."

  "Then he goes all the way out there from Washington, and finds out how to find Lower Greasewood, and the Tsosie place, dreams up that bullshit story about wanting to be a Navajo, and-"

  "Maybe not bullshit," Leaphorn said. "From what you told me about him."

  "No," Chee said, thoughtfully, "I think maybe not. I think now that might have been part of the genuine Highhawk package. But anyway, it involved a lot of trouble. He must have written that oration he gave we just heard, and then got it dubbed in on the tape. Now why? What's he going to do with it? I think it's obvious he was planting it in that mask exhibit, in his Talking God exhibit. The tape practically says that. And Highhawk has a track record of knowing how to get publicity. The kind to put the heat on the Smithsonian. That tape was sure well designed to do that. Zany enough to make the front page."

  "Did he have it with him when he left you in his office?" Leaphorn asked.

  "He had a cardboard box. About three times the size of a shoebox. Anyway, it was big enough for the mask and all. He picked it up just as he was leaving."

  "And that tells us what?" Rodney asked. He shook his head, thinking about it.

  Silence in the room. Rodney now slouched in Highhawk's swivel chair; Chee leaning against the wall in the practiced slouch of a man who had done a lot of leaning against things, a lot of waiting for his age; Joe Leaphorn sitting on the edge of the desk, looking uncomfortable in his three-piece suit, his gray, burr-cut head bowed slightly forward, his expression that of a man who is listening to sounds inside his own head. The quiet air around them smelled of dust and, faintly, of decay.

  "Officer Chee here, he and I, we have a problem," Leaphorn said-half to Rodney and half to the desk. "We are like two dogs who followed two different sets of tracks to the same brush pile. One dog thinks there's a rabbit under the brush, the other thinks it's a bobcat. Same brush pile, different information." He glanced at Chee. "Right?"

  Chee nodded.

  "As for my end of it, I see the body of a worn-out, toothless man who keeps his old shoes polished. His body is under a chamisa bush in New Mexico. And in the shirt pocket is a note mentioning Agnes Tsosie's Yeibichai ceremony. When I get out to Agnes Tsosie's place, I run into the name of Henry Highhawk. He's coming out. I follow those pointed shoes back to Washington and I find a little den of Chilean terrorists-or, maybe more accurately, the victims of Chilean terror. And right in the next apartment to this den is a little man with red hair and freckles and the torso of a weightlifter who just happens to fit the description of the guy who probably killed Pointed Shoes with his knife. But I've come to a dead end. Good idea who killed my man, now. I think that surely the man's widow, his family, they'll tell me why. No such luck. Instead of that, they act like they never heard of him."

  Leaphorn sighed, tapped his fingers on the desk top, and continued without a glance at either of his listeners. "I get a make on Mr. Pointed Shoes' identity from the FBI. It turns out he's one of the big ones in one of the factions that's sort of at war with the right-wing government in Chile. Turns out the ins have already killed one of his bunch earlier. So now the mystery is solved. I know who Pointed Shoes is. His name is Santillanes. I know who killed him-or I think I do-and I think I know why. But now I've got a new problem. Why were Santillanes' kinfolks acting that way? It looked like they didn't want anyone to know the man had been killed."

  Leaphorn's droning voice stopped for several seconds. "Now why in the world would that be?" he said. He was frowning. He shook his head, looked at Rodney and Chee. "Either one of you want to break in here?"

  Neither one did.

  "So," Leaphorn said. "So, I'm almost to the brush pile. Now my question is what the hell is going on here? And for some reason I can't get Highhawk out of my head. He doesn't seem to fit anywhere. I think I know how Santillanes found out he should go to the Navajo Reservation to find Highhawk. But I don't understand why."

  Leaphorn paused again, looked at Chee. "Do you know about this? Right after Highhawk pulled that business of digging up the graves and mailing the bones to the museum, he got the big splash of publicity he wanted. But before anybody could serve a warrant on him, he had dropped out of sight. All his friends and his neighbors could tell anybody looking for him that he was going to Arizona to attend a Yeibichai ceremonial for some relative named Agnes Tsosie. I think Santillanes probably read about his exploits in the paper and went looking for him about the same time the police did. Santillanes got the word that Henry was heading west for the Yeibichai. But he didn't know it was a month in the future."

  Leaphorn stopped again, inhaled hugely, exhaled, drummed his fingers against the desk top, thinking. Rodney made a sentence-opening sound but cut it off without actually saying anything. But he looked at his watch.

  "Why would Chilean politicians want to meet with Henry Highhawk?" Leaphorn asked himself the question. "They had to want to contact him badly enough to send someone three thousand miles, and get him killed, and then send somebody else to complete the mission. And post his bail." He glanced up at Chee. "That's right, isn't it? And Highhawk called that guy with the missing fingers his friend, didn't he? Any idea how long they'd known each other?"

  "They didn't," Chee said. "Highhawk was lying. They hadn't met until the Yeibichai."

  "You sure?" Leaphorn asked.

  "I watched them meet," Chee said. "I'm sure."

  Rodney held up a hand. "Friends, I've got to go and do some things
. Two or three in fact. I was going to be back at the office about an hour ago. Stick around. I'll be back." He slipped off the desk and disappeared into the hallway.

  "Every effect has its cause," Leaphorn said to Chee. "Once in a while, maybe, a star just falls at random. But I don't believe in random. The Santillanes bunch had a hell of a good reason to chase after Highhawk. What was it?"

  "I don't know," Chee said. "All I know about the Santillanes bunch is from seeing Bad Hands a couple of times. I got here by a totally different route. And I've got a different question under your brush pile." He sat on the desk about where Rodney had been leaning, thinking, deciding how to explain this premonition, this hunch that had been making him uneasy.

  "I keep remembering Highhawk at the Yeibichai," Chee said. "I was curious about him so I was watching him, standing just a little off to the side where I could see his face. He was cold-" He laughed, glanced at Leaphorn. "Of course he was cold. Everybody's cold at a Night Chant, but he was colder than most of us because, you know, if you come from the East you think desert country is supposed to be hot, so he wasn't dressed like us. Just had on a leather jacket. Anyway, he was shivering." Chee stopped. Why was he telling Leaphorn all this? Highhawk standing, shaking with cold, hugging himself, the wind blowing dust across the dance ground around his ankles, the wavering light from the bonfires turning his face red. His expression had been rapt, and Chee had noticed his lips were moving. Highhawk was singing to himself. Agnes Tsosie had been standing on a blanket spread on the packed earth in front of the medicine hogan attended by the hataalii. Talking God, Humpback God, and Water Sprinkler had been making their slow, stately approach. Chee had edged closer, close enough to hear what Highhawk was chanting. "He stirs. He stirs. He stirs. He stirs," Highhawk had been singing. "Now in old age wandering, he stirs." It had been words from the "Song of Waking" which the hataalii would have sung on the first midnight of the ceremonial, summoning the spirit in the mask from its cosmic sleep to take its part in the ritual. He remembered noticing as Highhawk sang that while some of the words were wrong, the man's expression was deeply reverent.

  Now he noticed that Leaphorn's expression was puzzled. "He was cold," Leaphorn said. "Yes, but you haven't made your point."

  "He was a believer," Chee said. "You know what I mean. Some people come to a ceremonial out of family duty, and some come out of curiosity, or to meet friends. But to some it is a spiritual experience. You can tell by their faces."

  Leaphorn's expression was still puzzled. "And he was one of those? He believed?"

  Yes, Chee thought, Highhawk was one of those. You're not one, lieutenant. You don't believe. You see the Navajo Way as a harmless cultural custom. You would be one of those who go only as a family duty. But this crazy white man believed. Truly believed.

  Leaphorn waited for that to be explained.

  "Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think so. I don't think Highhawk would use the yei mask like that. I don't think he would put it on the head of a manikin in a public display. I don't think the museum would approve of that either. Despite what Highhawk said. For example, they brought in a hataalii, a man named Sandoval, brought him in to check out the exhibit and make sure Henry wasn't doing anything sacrilegious. So-" Chee paused, thinking about it.

  "Go on," Leaphorn said.

  "So Highhawk was making a duplicate mask. A replica of the genuine Yeibichai mask in the museum's collection. A copy. He must have had both of them here last night." Chee picked up the yei mask by its fur collar ruff and held it up, facing Leaphorn.

  "This mask we have here, it's not the genuine Yeibichai mask," Chee said. "It's just about an exact replica. Highhawk made it because he wouldn't use the real one in a public display, and he certainly wouldn't have rigged up his tape player inside of it."

  "It looks old as the mountains to me," Leaphorn said. "Cracked and worn."

  "He's good at that," Chee said. "But take a look at it. Up close. Look for pollen stains, along the cheeks where the medicine man puts it when he feeds the mask, and on the end of the mouthpiece. And down into the leather tube that forms the mouth. It's not there. No stains. He dried the buckskin somehow, or got an old piece, and dried out the paint, but why bother with the pollen stains? Nobody would notice it."

  "No," Leaphorn said slowly. "Nobody would. So the mask on exhibit downstairs is the genuine Yeibichai mask."

  "So who put it there?" Leaphorn mused. "Whoever killed Highhawk must have put it there, wouldn't you say? But-" Leaphorn stopped, midsentence. "Where is that Yeibichai display?"

  "It's sort of off to one side, to the left of the center of the mask exhibition. Right across from it is an exhibition of Andean stuff, Incan and so forth. The high point is a gold and emerald mask which some Chilean general is trying-" Now it was Chee's turn to halt, midthought. "My God!" he said. "Dr. Hartman said this Chilean general-I think he's the head of their political police-was supposed to come in today to look at the thing."

  He moved toward the door while he was still asking the question, amazingly fast for a man of his age in a three-piece suit. And Jim Chee was right behind him.

  Chapter Twenty

  ®

  Leroy Fleck walked the block and a half to where he'd parked the old Chevy sedan. He walked briskly, but without breaking into a trot, without any sign of urgency that anyone who saw him might remember. The important point was to keep any connection from being made between the crime and the car. If that happened he was a goner. If it didn't, then he had time to do the things he had to do.

  He drove just at the speed limit, careful at the lights, careful changing lanes, and as he drove he listened to the police scanner on the seat beside him. Nothing much exciting except for a multivehicle, multi-injury accident on the Interstate 66 exit ramp at the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge. He was almost downtown before the call came. A slight strain showed in the laconic voice of the dispatcher and Fleck recognized the address of the nursing home and the code. It meant officer down. It meant nothing else would matter much for a while in D.C. law enforcement. A policeman had been killed. Within fifteen minutes, probably less, Fleck's description would be broadcast to every police car in the district. The noon newscasts would carry it big. But nobody had his picture and he still had time.

  His first stop was at Western Union. The message he sent to Delmar was short: TAKE CARE OF MAMA. TELL HER I LOVE HER. AM SENDING MONEY ORDER.

  He gave the girl at the desk the message and then opened the plastic purse and counted out $2,033. He thought for a moment. He had almost half a tank of gasoline but he might need to make a telephone call, or pay an admission fee somewhere. He saved the three ones, stuffed them in his shirt pocket. He asked the girl to subtract the transmission fees and make out a money order for the rest. Then he drove to the Chilean embassy.

  He parked down the street at a place where he could watch the entrance gate. Then he walked through the drizzle to the pay booth, dialed the embassy, and gave the woman who answered the word that The Client had given him for emergencies.

  "I need Stone," he said. He always wondered why the man used that for a code name. Why not something in Spanish?

  "Ah," the woman said. "One little moment, please."

  Then he waited. He waited a long time. The rain was mixed with snow now, big wet flakes which stuck to the glass of the booth for a second and then slid down the pane. Fleck went over his plan, but there was nothing much to go over. He would try to lure The Client out where he could reach him. If The Client wouldn't come out, he would wait. He would get him eventually. He would get as many as he could. He would get ones as important as possible. It was all he could do. He knew The Client wasn't his own man. He was taking his orders from somebody up the ladder. But it didn't matter to Fleck. Like Mama said, they were all the same.

  "Yes," the voice said. It was not The Client's voice.

  "I got to talk to Stone," Fleck said.

  "He is not available. Not now."

  "When then?" Fleck asked.


  "Later today."

  Perhaps, Fleck thought, he could get someone else. Someone more important. That would be as good. Even better.

  "Let me talk to his superior then."

  "Just a moment." Fleck could hear a distant-sounding voice, asking questions.

  "They are getting ready to go," the man said. "They have no time now."

  "I have to talk to somebody. It's an emergency."