Geistmann

by Singer, Ron

  “A la gente tenga gusto de usted.” [To people like you, I am.]

  After that, she spooned him into a dreamless sleep. At four, when the alarm went off, he washed and dressed, while she watched, expressionless, from the bed. Then, she got up and stood in front of him in her nightgown, waiting. He handed her the money, which, without counting, she placed on the dresser. Quickly, and being careful not to press up against her body, he leaned forward and kissed the woman on both cheeks. Then, he left. Even though the negotiated price had been a hundred and fifty dollars, he had given her three hundred. It would have been more, but he was beginning to think he should take heed of all the warnings, and stop leaving so many breadcrumbs.

  After his nap in Farmington, Geistmann bought two sets of used clothing at a pawnshop. The first was just an old moth-eaten Navajo blanket and a pair of ratty deerskin boots. The other was a cowboy outfit, into which he quickly changed in an alley behind a row of shuttered shops. Then, he stuffed his own former costume and the blanket and boots into the big black trekker’s pack he now carried with him everywhere. Dressed in his new old jeans, flannel shirt, scuffed brown boots, and battered black hat with its silver band, Geistmann thought he looked enough like a Native American to fool most non-Native Americans. But he knew he could not really have “passed” because, although he had dyed his long hair black and gathered it in a ponytail, his bone structure and walk were both wrong. Right before leaving Albuquerque, he had tried walking like a Navajo, but had immediately realized the effect was ridiculous. Even so, the old blanket and boots would serve their purpose. As usual, he felt invisible. Biligaanas (non-Navajos) would probably think he was some kind of non-Navajo Native American who had wandered onto the Rez, and Dine’ (Navajos) would assume he was just one of the many biligaana wanna-bes.

  Back out on Route 64, he partook of the local fare, mutton stew and fry bread, at an ersatz restaurant on the highway: a big pot set on a gas hotplate on the bed of a pickup truck, with two folding chairs beneath a pinon tree. Geistmann’s body was a temple, but one that occasionally demanded animal sacrifice. Not having eaten in almost twelve hours, and anticipating that it would be at least that long before he ate again, he enjoyed the ample, rich, greasy food, which he chewed slowly and washed down, fat and all, with a can of Cola. Of the two brands on offer, he chose the cheaper, local one, of which he had never heard, because he was unwilling to pay a premium to the hated multinational.

  After the meal, he headed west toward Black Mesa, Arizona, a hundred and thirty-two miles away. He was on his way to a sing, a healing ceremony, for an old woman. As he drove through the mostly dry, flat country west of Farmington, he suddenly came upon a sight so strange that neither his reading nor the photos he had accessed had completely prepared him. Bumping onto the laterite, he turned the motor off and left the truck angled to the road so the license plate would be invisible to vehicles passing in either direction. Geistmann was being good: the truck’s papers were clean.

  He leaned against the side door away from the highway and gazed up at what looked like the remnant of a massive geologic formation. This was a very high, thin slice of black rock, perpendicular to the highway and running westward from a few hundred feet off the road all the way to the vanishing point, or, as he fantasized, to infinity. He knew that this formation was called a curtain rock, and that it wound its way some thirty miles over to Ship Rock. He had read that the formation could have been formed when a magma-less volcano blew, spewing a pipe of air upward that lifted the sheet of rock. But that was just a hypothesis: his sources did not really know when (or even whether) this geological event had taken place. Perhaps Mr. John Robinson could get to the root of the matter.

  The rock formation triggered one of his most frequent memory images. Armande Toularelle sat, hands folded, at the end of the long, highly polished conference table. With his face screwed so tight it looked like a chicken’s asshole, he pronounced the fatal –to both of them—words: “Désolé, mon ami, mais nous doit vous tourner pour avaler. La demande est rejetée.” (Sorry, my friend, but we must turn you down. The application is rejected.”) Then, the chicken’s ass exploded into a whirlwind of blood, feathers, and bone.

  After about twenty minutes, Geistmann sighed, climbed into the truck, and, back in the here and now, continued on his way. Weather conditions by nightfall should be perfect. Early that morning on his way to Chaco, he had listened on the truck radio to the detailed forecast on KTNN, the Navajo station, then used his BlackBerry to confirm the details with the forecast from the U.S. Weather Service. By evening, it should be around fifty degrees Fahrenheit, with low humidity and no rain. The moon would not rise until one a.m., and there would be partial cloud cover. There was one further, particular detail to remember: the wind should be moderate, north by northwest. Given his intended action, and, aware that Scott Peters would be using a local tracker, wind direction could prove crucial.

  From the scouting trip he had made six years before, also in early spring, Geistmann retained a precise mental map of the exact topography of the huge, complex mesa -- the hills, gullies, escarpments, washes, streams, tracks, paths, and various grades of road. He assumed that the topography of this part of the world, except for the wounds inflicted by human predators, changed slowly, if at all. He drove along at a steady fifty, five miles below the limit, his intention being to arrive a few minutes after dark. That would be just in time to catch part of the ninth and final night of the sing and, he hoped, his first sight of the person who had drawn him to Arizona. He should be able to recognize this man from the crumpled newspaper clipping in his wallet.

  Thursday, March 27-Wednesday, April 2, 2008. New York, NY.

  Robinson realized he had not backed away from his exciting new job, after all. Wednesday night, as soon as he got home from Virginia, with an uneasy sense of security lingering from the conversation with Diodur Fedoruk, he googled “Toularelle and the DGAFP.” There was a wealth of information about the murder. He read about thirty news articles in the French press, from 2005 and 2006, ranging from the sober to the lurid.

  Then, he went to the website of DGAFP, which turned out to be an important arm of the French civil service. Toularelle had been a career employee, rising to a high rank before his retirement in 1992. Although, by now, Robinson was sure that the omission of Toularelle from the Geistmann dossier was significant, he forced himself to let it go at that. Killing his faithful machine for the night, he got ready for bed. The next day, without fanfare, he returned to the Library. Ian Bostridge was, of course, curious about what Arnold Weatherbee had wanted.

  “He asked me to consult on a case,” Robinson offered.

  Bostridge salivated, but was too polite to press his employee for details. “You still have plenty of leave time, John,” he said, “ if you need to work for him again.” Foolishly, Robinson’s amour proper was a bit hurt.

  On Thursday night, dinner was cooked and eaten. The dishes were washed and, unusual for him, dried and put away. It was too early to go to bed, and he did not feel like reading. Seated idly at his desk, he recalled Weatherbee’s initial job pitch, and thought of a selling point the salesman had omitted. “All those dusty old manuscripts, John,” he might have suggested, “don’t you get tired of them?”

  Well, no, he didn’t get tired of them. In fact, once this business was over, he would be glad to go back into the archives in search of something new and exciting. In fact, he already had an idea or two. Then, the phone rang. Was there still a God? They went through the code, and he heard the clicks.

  “Well?” asked Weatherbee.

  “Aren’t you going to beat around the bush, Arnold? Yes, I’ll stay on –-for now.”

  “Excellent! Frankly, I’m not all that surprised. Here’s where we stand. Some of the details will be familiar. We think we have until April 1st before he strikes again, and of course we want to avoid the mistakes we made in Virginia. This time, Scott Peters will be personally directing the apprehension, liaising with the
USMS and local police forces, both state and tribal. Peter and I will stay in the background. Peter is in contact with Bob Martinez, trying to plug the leaks. And Warfield has finally issued a formal ‘shoot on sight’ authorization. But no sign of him –of Geistmann-- yet.”

  “They call it ‘the big rez.’ ”

  “That’s why I’m sending you, John, to help us figure out where to look.”

  So, as Fedoruk had anticipated, Weatherbee was sending him to Dine’tah, or Navajoland. Robinson did not say so, but he thought Fred Neugeborn could have done the tracking job better. Maybe, it was like the double safety features on children’s car seats.

  “I’ve just bought a ticket for you on a flight to Albuquerque, via Houston, late Wednesday morning. We’ll arrange for Bostridge to hire a temp for at least a week. Leave your car in a lot in New York, to avoid alternate side parking tickets. Get the chit, we’ll pay.” He nattered on, going through further travel details, which he said Peter would confirm in an email. “You’ll be partnered with a Navajo policeman named Hank Yazzie, John. He’ll be told the gist of why you’re there. And ‘Hank Yazzie’ is his real name. Questions?” Weatherbee sounded as if he had been drinking strong coffee.

  “No questions. But ‘Hank Yazzie’ isn’t his ‘real’ name.” Robinson explained the Navajo dual-name system, how they have a secret war name, and one for everyday use. Then, he explained that the Navajo name for their own nation, “Dine’,” means “human beings.”

  “Where does that leave the rest of us?” replied Weatherbee. “Anyway, Hank will expect you sometime Thursday morning at the police station in their capital, Window Rock. We’ll have a pre-paid rental car reserved for you at the Albuquerque airport. On the way over to the Reservation, you’ll have FBI or USMS shadows, like you had on the way down from New York Monday night. But, if I were you, I wouldn’t mention that to Hank. A lot of Navajo cops hate the Feds.” He came up for air. “Look, John, I probably won’t be talking to you again before you leave so… good luck. And don’t worry, Hank is a real pro, you should be safe with him. He’s a tracker, and he won’t eat spiked food.” Robinson did not bother to say that he had thought he would be safe with Rocker, too. “So… goodbye for now, my friend. Oh, excellent comments at the meeting Tuesday.”

  With several evenings to kill, Robinson did some prodigious googling, searching and collating hundreds of items that might be even tangentially related to Geistmann. At least in its methods, this work did not feel very different from what he did at the Library. As he poured back over the dossier, thinking about all the puns, Robinson recalled one that had been made by a Library colleague. That the innocent pun was in Spanish had surprised Robinson, who thought Spanish jokes were always spicy, even obscene.

  “Que hace el pez aburrido en domingo?” [What does the bored fish do on Sunday?] “Nada!” [“Nada(r)” means both "swim" and "nothing.”]

  Robinson took stock of the most salient facts. “Hombre del fantasma.” “Der un-heilige Geist.” Revenge fanatic. Tomas Goncalves. And he spoke “almost le francais veritable.” Now that Robinson knew about Toularelle and the DGAFP, he was leaning more and more toward France. Then, he had a Eureka moment. Who, in France, spoke French almost like the French? Immigrants from francophone countries, of course!

  This was how he spent most of the six evenings. There was one big surprise, an email from Judy, the first in over a year:

  from: Judy Wolfe jwolfe271@gmail.com

  Subject: Hello

  Date: March 31, 2008 2:37:18 p.m.

  To John Robinson

  John, dear (still),

  Let’s get together. I miss you!

  Love (still),

  Judy

  Perhaps in his new spirit of reckless abandon, after putting the email aside for an hour or two while he helped some students, Robinson replied:

  from John Robinson jrobinson@exchange.library.columbia.edu

  Subject: Hello to you.

  Date: March 31, 2008 4:09:31 p.m.

  To Judy Wolfe

  Well, J., what a nice surprise! I’m out of town for a few days this week, but I’ll call you when I get back. Lunch at the old place, perhaps?

  As ever, John

  Their history had been simple. After meeting in grad school, and completing their respective degrees, they had moved back to New York, where they had continued living together for another year, and then married. Judy had become a social worker. Mainly because she wanted children, and he did not, after five more years, they went through an amicable divorce. Fifteen years later, Judy was Director of an agency for the elderly, had two children, and was still married to their father, a stockbroker. The family lived in a palatial apartment on West End Avenue, which Robinson had only visited once, to sign some papers. He had wondered when Judy would tire of her decent, workaholic husband.

  While he was giving the apartment a final dusting on Monday, he lingered over the desk, seeing the after image of the G, as if it were the mark of Zorro. Methodical, as always, on Tuesday evening, when he got home from another uneventful day at the Library, he ate half the food he had cooked and froze the rest. Then, he packed and went to bed with a book, a new study of the Parma Ildefonsus, which included the Cluny manuscripts on which he had written his dissertation. He was pleased to see that he had made it into the Acknowledgments and several footnotes. His flight the next day was not until almost noon. He took the airport bus from 96th and Broadway, and still reading the book, flew without incident to Houston and on to Albuquerque.

  Chapter Eleven

  Episode 11.

  Wednesday, April 2-Thursday, April 3, 2008. Window Rock, Chinle, Kayenta, and Chilchinbito, Arizona

  WALK IN BEAUTY. DON’T LITTER.

  “That’s us Dine’, all right,” said Hank Yazzie, jerking his head back toward the billboard. “The old and the new.” His chuckle lit up the pumpkin face beneath the also big black cowboy hat with its elegant narrow silver and turquoise band. Hank was a beauty, himself, Robinson thought, but did not say. Was it the Hopi or the Zuni who called the Navajos “head pounders”?

  The unmarked patrol car slid along the smooth asphalt at a steady fifty-five, which Robinson guessed was the local speed limit. They were heading west on AZ 264 from Window Rock to Chinle, site of one of the Dine’s most sacred places, the Canyon de Chelly.

  “Ever been to the Canyon before, John?” Hank’s bracelet, which matched the hatband, caught the glint from the overhead sun. They had been on the road for about an hour, and had just passed a tiny place called Ganado. Robinson knew that, in another fifteen minutes or so, they would turn north onto AZ 191. It was almost eleven, and he anticipated that they would arrive right around noon, just in time for lunch at the wonderful cafeteria of the Thunderbird Lodge in the Canyon de Chelly National Monument, run by the (God protect me from another disappointment) U.S. Park Service.

  “I have,” he replied. “My wife –my ex-- and I drove out here twenty-eight years ago.”

  “Brace yourself, then, it hasn’t changed at all.” Hank was a joker. Robinson wondered if he was disappointed that he was not going to bear witness at his charge’s first view of what Robinson regarded as one of the world’s most beautiful vistas. Not as colossal as the Grand Canyon, but equally beautiful.

  The long drive had been Robinson’s idea. He had made the suggestion over coffee at Navajo Nation Police Headquarters in Window Rock. Having driven from Albuquerque to Gallup the night before, he had left the Gallup motel, which was ninety-some miles from Window Rock, at seven-thirty that morning. He had not enjoyed the drive up from Gallup. After enduring bad delays on US 666 for road repairs, he had turned west onto 264, where he soon came upon a very ugly strip mine: coal. But there were compensations, for by then he was getting into the red rock country, seeing formations that seemed new since he had driven this road with Judy all those years ago.

  “You don’t feel sick or anything, do you, John?” Hank had asked the question out of the blue, as they stood sipping thei
r weak coffee at the dispatchers’ desk in the police station. Several of the other officers grinned. Robinson knew they were waiting for him to say, “No, why?”

  “Did you ever figure out what caused it?” he asked, instead.

  “Caused what?” Hank replied, with a distinct wariness.

  “The sick room syndrome you folks had last February.” Robinson was working the crowd. He had read about this outbreak in the archives of an Internet Navajo news source he had scanned the night before at the Gallup motel, a fleabag with hot tubs and wireless.

  “Nope,” another officer chimed in. He was a tall, gaunt dry-looking man whose nametag read “Rex Jim Mailboy.” “Why? Did you figure it out?” Aggressive, but friendly, he grinned at Robinson.

  “Actually, I do have a theory.” The room got ready to laugh. “Bad gas from Hank’s jokes.” Robinson was relieved that Yazzie participated in the laughter. Good, Hank could take a joke, not just dish it out. This meant that, during the long drive they were about to make together, they would be able to coexist without the biligaana’s having to suck up quantities of “friendly” abuse.

  Robinson’s idea of going to the Canyon de Chelly had been based on his theory that Geistmann enjoyed playing the tourist before he struck. Hank had listened to the theory, shrugged, and signed out an unmarked white cruiser. Now, as they turned north onto 191, Robinson thought of the FBI and U.S. Marshals Service, some of whose vans, confiscated from drug dealers and “coyotes,” must look just like this one. He wondered how his alleged minders could remain out of sight in this empty country. As Yazzie pushed the cruiser down the straight road, still at a steady fifty-five, Robinson played “Guess the Minder.” Was it that dressed-up old Navajo lady in the battered red pickup? Was it…