Tony Hillerman - Leaphorn & Chee 11 - Sacred Clowns

by Sacred Clowns(lit)

  And then there was the matter of the Councilman Chester bribery business. He had rushed off without leaving Leaphorn any explanation of that tape he'd left in the tape player on the lieutenant's desk. Not that much explanation would be needed. It would be clear enough to Leaphorn. Someone had tapped Jimmy Chester's telephone-or maybe Ed Zeck's. Ed Zeck was an old-time Indian Country lawyer-a regular lobbyist at tribal council meetings. So you had a tape of Chester dunning Zeck for his bribe money. A very businesslike arrangement, so it sounded. It sounded as if Chester was accumulating interest on his twenty-grand payoff. And apparently Chester had borrowed it from the bank to be paid back when Zeck delivered the money. Sort of an advance, or maybe a way to launder it. Such high finance, the way banks operated, was far, far from Chee's zone of expertise.

  The Farmington police, it turned out, were way ahead of Chee. Chee was referred to Sergeant Eddie Bell.

  "We handled that right after it happened," Bell said. "There're seven places in the yellow pages that do printing, and all but two will do bumper stickers if you want a thousand or so, and three of 'em would run off a single if you were willing to pay the preparation cost, and not a damn one of them remembered doing an "ERNIE IS THE GREATEST job."

  "Well, hell," Chee said. "You'd think somebody would remember an odd one like that. It would have to be one of those places that does singles, I'd think." This concept was new to Chee. He had admired thousands of bumper stickers, from assurances that God loved him, to recommendations for saving the planet, to obscenities, to dire warnings about following too closely. Declarations of RED POWER, and even one that simply said BUMPER STICKER. But he'd never given a thought to where they came from.

  "Do they do that?" he asked Bell. "You just walk in and tell them what you want and they print you one?"

  "Sure," Bell said. "Quikprint right down in the next block will run one off for you in five minutes. But it's pretty expensive that way. Not like so much a thousand. So they don't do many, and everyone we talked to says they thought they'd remember that ERNIE is THE GREATEST. It's sort of weird."

  "I guess he must have got it printed somewhere else," Chee said.

  Sergeant Bell's expression said he thought that was a statement too obvious to need saying.

  "We asked for checks of printers at Albuquerque, and Gallup, and Flagstaff, and Phoenix. So far they all came up blank. But you know how that is."

  "Yeah," Chee said. People tended to be way too busy to do other people's work. Or to do it well. He was disappointed and Bell saw it.

  "Look. If you're going to keep working on this sticker business, be careful with it. It's an easy one to spot. If he finds out we're watching for it, he'll scrape it off. And if he doesn't scrape it off, we're going to have him sooner or later."

  Now Bell also had said something too obvious to need saying. They were even.

  And Chee was back to square one. The only thing he had that probably hadn't been worked by the state cops, or the Farmington police, or the San Juan County Sheriff, was the smell of onions. The man must have smelled strongly- not just onion breath. And it was, as Ellie had said, too early to be eating hamburgers. She'd said it seemed like the odor came from his clothing, and it must have been powerful.

  Chee drove down to the Garden Spot Produce Company on West Main, checked the vehicles parked there without scoring a green pickup with an ERNIE is THE GREATEST sticker, and parked himself. He'd scanned through the typed copy of his man's confession which Bell had given him. Now he got out the taped copy he'd gotten at KNDN and stuck it in his player.

  The voice was that of a young woman, talking in halting Navajo. Chee frowned. They'd given him the wrong tape. The woman was reporting the death of her maternal aunt, obviously reading something that had been written for her in English and stumbling over the translation. The family was getting together at the home of the deceased in Mexican Water to talk about what to do with her horses, and her grazing lease, and other property, and there was going to be a funeral service at the Assembly of God Mission at Kayenta. The halting voice told Chee that the woman was born to the Streams Come Together People and born for the Towering House Clan. But, Chee thought, whatever her clans, she had gone onto the Jesus Road. Before he could ponder that and whether it would affect the incest taboo, another voice came on.

  "I tell the family of Hosteen Todachene that I am sorry. I heard the truck hit something, but I was drunk. I went back and I didn't see anything. I don't drink hardly ever so when I did drink that night I got drunk. I would have helped him if I knew he was there. Now I am sorry. I will send money every two weeks to help make up for the help he gave you. I want you to know I am sorry." End of tape. Chee rewound it and played it again. The words rushed out-a man tense with emotion and, understandably, in a hurry. He played it again. The speech sounded memorized, as if the man had written it out. He must have thought about it a lot. In this third time through Chee was impressed with the emotion. The man sounded as if he were holding back tears.

  He switched off the tape, turned on the radio, punched the AM button. At the moment, KNDN was broadcasting a singer asking, "Why did you leave me, Lucille, with three little children and a crop in the field." He turned the volume down a notch, and sat trying to visualize the man. Medium-sized, middle-aged, Ellie had said, wearing jeans and a jean jacket and a baseball cap with a long bill bent up in the middle like somebody had sat on it. On the tape he sounded like a childhood Navajo speaker-probably not boarding school. A lot of middle-aged Navajos had a limited vocabulary in their language because in those days the BIA wouldn't let them speak it in school and that was the age period when you grow out of your childhood vocabulary. This man spoke it well. He knew the verbs to convert an English-language situation into fluent Navajo. Chee switched off the radio and went into the produce store. The clerk pointed him to a telephone. He called the Farmington Police number. Yes, Sergeant Bell was in.

  "You know in that broadcast, the man said he was going to send money to the Todachene family," Chee said. "Do you know if he's done it?"

  "He did," Bell said. "At least somebody did." He laughed. "Unfortunately, he forgot to put his return address on the envelope."

  "Was it mailed around here?"

  "Farmington postmark," Bell said. "Apparently he mailed it two days after he ran over the guy."

  "How much?"

  "Six twenties, two tens, and a five," Bell said. "Wish he'd sent a check."

  "That'd be a hundred and forty-five dollars," Chee said. "Does that mean anything to you? The amount?"

  "Not a damn thing," Bell said. "At least he didn't spend it getting drunk again."

  "Well," Chee said, "thanks. If I learn anything I'll let you know. But I haven't got much hope."

  "Hey, by the way, did you hear it happened again? Down at your place this time?"

  "What happened?"

  "Somebody showed up at that open mike KNDN operates down at Kirtland. Down at the Navajo Tractor Company beside the highway. This guy walked in and broadcast a tape of one of your tribal councilmen talking about a bribe."

  Chee sucked in his breath. "Did what?"

  "I didn't hear it," Bell said. "But we got a bunch of calls about it and somebody went down to see about it. They told him this guy walked into the dealership there and got in line with the people waiting to broadcast their announcements. The microphone's in a little box on the wall in the lobby and you just wait your turn. He said, 'What you are about to hear is telephone talk between tribal councilman so-and-so and such-and-such, the lobbyist for some company or other.' And then he played this conversation. Held his little tape recorder up to the mike."

  "Be damned," Chee said. "Who was it?"

  "Who knows. People come in every day during the noon hour to make announcements and nobody paid much attention. It happened a lot like the last one at the station in Farmington."

  "Did you get a description?"

  "Not much of one. White man. Maybe five-eight or -ten. Maybe forty or forty-five. Ha
d a jacket on and a hat. Nothing on what he was driving, or how he got there. The manager said there's always a line of Navajos coming in to use the mike during that period for making announcements. The people working there are selling tractors, farm equipment, and stuff, and not paying attention to the mike. It's just a public service gimmick with the station. Probably they get a trade-out on their radio advertising or something."

  "That description doesn't narrow it down much," Chee said. It didn't need to be narrowed down for him. The man would be Roger Applebee. Applebee had found a way to use an illegal tape that couldn't be used in court.

  He hung up and stood with his hand still on the telephone, considering his next step. Applebee's broadcast would stir up a lot of trouble, he had no doubt of that. But it wasn't his trouble. Not unless the lieutenant changed his mind and let him investigate what was going on with the toxic-waste-dump business. That wasn't likely. His trouble was the Todachene hit-and-run. Chee's thoughts turned to the six twenties, two tens, and one five, and to the voice of a man promising to send money every two weeks.

  "Thanks for the telephone," he said to the clerk. "Could I ask you something sort of semi-personal?"

  The clerk looked doubtful.

  "Do you people working here get paid once a month, or once a week, or every two weeks, or what?"

  "Once a week," the clerk said.

  That took care of that.

  The bins beside him were stacked with fruit. Oranges, then three varieties of apples, then pears, then bananas, then grapes. Bins along the wall held a mountain of potatoes, then yams, then lettuce, then cabbage, then carrots, then onions, then-

  The clerk was counting out change for a customer.

  "Where do you get your onions?" Chee asked.

  "Onions?" the clerk asked.

  Chee pointed. "Onions," he repeated.

  "I think they're local," the clerk said. "Yeah, we get them from NAI."

  "From Navajo Agricultural Industries?" Chee said. "Right over across the river?"

  "That's right," the clerk said, but Chee was already heading for the door. Why hadn't he thought of that?

  17

  EVEN BEFORE he had finished reading Chee's memo, Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn had come to a couple of conclusions. The first was that he had guessed right about Chee. He was young, and he still had the crazy idea that he could be both a hataalii and a tribal cop simultaneously, and he had a tendency to do things his own way. But he was smart. And in this job, being smart was something you needed to be a lot. The second conclusion was that he should clear up this question of the link between Eric Dorsey and Francis Sayesva now, and the place to start was exactly in the unlikely place that Chee's memo had suggested.

  He picked up the cap he'd just taken off and headed for the door. The first step was to talk to Dilly Streib. Streib would probably still be lingering over his breakfast at the Navajo Nation Inn, where Leaphorn had just left him. He'd get Dilly to make the proper calls to assure that no jurisdictional toes were bruised. Then he'd make the long drive to Tano. Perhaps Dilly would like to go along.

  Dilly wouldn't. He called the Albuquerque FBI office, and got the proper people at the BIA Law and Order Division to set things up across the jurisdictional boundaries. But as far as making the trip was concerned, he told Leaphorn, "Sorry, I got other sheep to shear.

  "Maybe you've got the time to solve problems for people over in the Albuquerque office. Not me," Streib said. "Besides, my tailbone's hurting from all the driving we've been doing."

  So, a little before noon, Leaphorn arrived at Tano, stopped at the pueblo administrative office, asked appropriate questions, and got directions to the house of Teddy Sayesva.

  Teddy Sayesva showed no enthusiasm for giving a Navajo policeman the fifth repetition, as he put it, "of what damn little I know about how my brother got killed." But the Tano culture's demand for hospitality quickly overpowered his irritation. He prepared coffee in the pot on the cookstove, and then perched stiffly on the edge of a kitchen chair-a small, thin man with a burr haircut and wire-rimmed glasses that looked too youthful for a face that was lined and tired. No, he hadn't been at home when his nephew had come to see his brother Francis. He was a member of a kachina society and had duties to take care of at the kiva society. Except for the boy's visit, which he hadn't been home to witness, he could think of nothing unusual happening that evening.

  He recited what had happened as if he'd memorized it. Francis had driven in from his home in Albuquerque early in the afternoon. As always during ceremonials, he used Teddy's place as his home base. At supper he'd seemed preoccupied, maybe worried, but Teddy presumed that was because he had to go the next week to testify before a federal grand jury. Teddy paused after mentioning that and glanced at Leaphorn to see if it needed explanation. It didn't. Leaphorn had read of that in the FBI report. It seemed to involve an auditing technicality in a banking case with no connection to this homicide.

  Leaphorn nodded. Teddy resumed his recitation.

  Teddy had left for the preceremonial meeting at his kiva. When he got home, Francis was in bed, sound asleep. He was still asleep when Teddy had left the next morning before dawn for prayers at the kiva.

  "I didn't have any more chance to talk to him," Teddy said, looking down at his hands as he said it. "The last time I saw Francis he was sleeping." He pointed into the next room. "Sleeping in that bed there. Where we both used to sleep when we were boys."

  "That would be a hard loss," Leaphorn said. He thought of telling the man of Emma's death, comparing the loss of the wife of your lifetime to the loss of a brother. But he could see no consolation in that. For either of them. Instead he said:

  "The FBI agent's report indicates that you had no idea what your nephew brought over here that night to give to Francis. Is that correct?"

  "No idea," Teddy Sayesva said. "The man told me it was supposed to be something long and narrow and wrapped in a newspaper. Like I said, I wasn't here when Delmar came with it. And I didn't see anything like that when I got back from the kiva. In fact, I didn't see anything different at all."

  He gestured, taking in the small, cluttered room. "Where would you put something in here where I wouldn't notice it? Right here in my own house. Anyplace he might have put it, we've looked. We didn't find anything."

  "We think it might have been something made of wood. Of a heavy dark wood," Leaphorn said.

  "Oh," Teddy Sayesva said. His tone indicated that this interested him.

  "Your nephew said this object, whatever it was, had religious significance," Leaphorn added. "That it had something to do with the ceremonial."

  "Delmar told you that?" Sayesva's expression showed his shock. "He shouldn't-" He let the sentence hang.

  Leaphorn cleared his throat. "Actually, he told the officer that he couldn't talk about what was in the package. He said he couldn't talk about it at all because he was not supposed to talk about anything involving his religion to anyone not initiated into his kiva."

  "Oh," Teddy Sayesva said. He looked relieved. "That's right. He couldn't talk about it if it concerned his religious duties."

  "And he didn't talk about it," Leaphorn said. "When the BIA officer told him he would have to take him in to Albuquerque to be questioned by the FBI if he didn't tell them what it was, then Delmar ran away."

  Sayesva nodded, approving both Delmar's action and this Navajo's understanding of it. He got up, walked quickly to the door, opened it, and stood for a moment looking out into the cold autumn sunlight. A pickup truck rolled down the alley past the porch. Teddy Sayesva waved, and shouted something unintelligible to those who don't speak the language of Tano. Then he looked up and down the street again, shut the door, and sat down.

  "You're Navajo," he said. "Do you have a wife from any of the pueblos? Are any of your family married into our people?"

  Leaphorn said no.

  "I will have to tell you a little bit about our religion then," Sayesva said. "Nothing secret." He produced a wry smile.
"Just former secrets-things that the anthropologists have already written about."

  He got up, poured coffee from the steaming pot, handed a mug to Leaphorn, and sat again.

  "You know my brother was the leader of our koshare society. Do you know about the koshares?"

  "A little," Leaphorn said. "I've watched them at kachina dances. The clowns, with the striped body paint, making people laugh. I know their duties are more than just to entertain."

  "In our pueblo, and in some of the others, men who have jobs in towns and live away from us can't be members of the most sacred societies, the kachina societies. They can't spend enough time in the kivas. So they become koshares, and that is sacred too, but in a different way." He paused, seeking a way to explain. "To outsiders, they look like clowns and what they do looks like clowning. Like foolishness. But it is more than that. The koshare have another role. I guess you could say they are our ethical police. It's their job to remind us when we drift away from the way that was taught us. They show us how far short we humans are of the perfection of the spirits."