At Ease with the Dead

by Walter Satterthwait

  Awkwardly, he shuffled his feet away from the car.

  I frisked him. No gun. I tugged his wallet from his back pocket, stepped back, flipped it open. The Texas driver’s license behind the scuffed plastic shield said that he was Luis Salamanca from El Paso.

  “Who sent you here, Luis?”

  His head twisted toward me. “Fuck you.”

  He wasn’t bright, maybe. But he knew for certain that he was one very tough dude. Probably as a kid, when the toughness was only a mask, he had needed it to survive. By now, with twenty or thirty years of brute force behind him, the toughness was real. It was, in a fundamental sense, his identity. And the only way to get him to talk was to shatter it.

  And the only way to do that was to become like him, but worse.

  It had happened to me for a few moments back at Lake Asayi, with those other three idiots. It had happened to Farrell, the red-haired cop in El Paso. It was an occupational hazard. The more often it happens, the harder it is to convince yourself that the violence is only a tool, a means, a mask. You have to choose your masks carefully, because they become, finally, your face.

  “Listen, Luis,” I said. “Very slowly now. You straighten out and you step back from the car. Good. Now you walk down the road, back the way you came.”

  Following behind, I let him walk six or seven paces, then told him, “Stop. Good. Down on the ground by the side of the road. Face down. Arms out in front of you. Good.”

  Even with him horizontal, nose to the dirt, his elaborate pompadour stayed rigidly in place. A testament to his excellent grooming skills.

  Holding the gun on him, I turned and called out, “Daniel?”

  An answering shout: “Yes.”

  “Can you bring the station wagon down here?”

  There was just enough room along the road for Daniel Begay to back the Subaru past the Malibu. He parked it ten yards beyond me and Luis, then stepped out and walked slowly, deliberately back to us, his cane lightly tapping in the dust. I was pretty sure that if he’d walked to his friend’s house, fifteen miles away, he would have taken all day to reach it. I was also pretty sure that he would have reached it.

  He looked down at Luis, looked up at me, and smiled. “What do we do with him?”

  He certainly had a flair for the apposite question.

  “We’ll see,” I said. “Could you turn off the ignition on the Malibu? And look around inside? There’s probably a gun.” Luis had been reluctant to leave the car. “Look under the seat. And check the trunk.”

  I watched Luis. Neither one of us spoke.

  After a few minutes, Daniel Begay came back and showed me the gun. A Charter Arms .38. “Under the seat,” he said. “Nothing in the trunk.”

  “Keep it,” I told him.

  He shoved the pistol into his pocket. He smiled. “I keep traveling with you, pretty soon I can open up a gun store.”

  He looked down at Luis, looked back at me. “So?”

  “Luis here doesn’t want to talk.”

  He shrugged. He looked off at the mountains, looked back to me again. “We could set him on fire.”

  His voice was level; for a moment, before I saw the small slight smile, I thought he was serious.

  On the ground, Luis moved his head slightly.

  Daniel Begay said, “We could siphon some gas out of his car.”

  “Someone might see the smoke,” I said. “You have a knife?”

  “Nope,” he said.

  “I’ve got a tire iron in the Subaru.”

  “There’s an easy way, you know.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “You shoot him in the leg.”

  I waited, watching Luis. He was breathing slowly, shallowly, as he listened. I said, “I don’t know, Daniel.”

  “There’s no one around to hear it,” he said. “We can kick him over the cliff afterwards.”

  “He’s a pretty tough hombre,” I said. “It might not work.”

  “The first time, maybe. But he’s got another leg.”

  I watched Luis. “I could hit an artery,” I said to Daniel Begay. “He could bleed to death before he talked.”

  “You got to aim for the knee.”

  Luis’s left leg moved slightly. I asked him, “What about you, Luis? You have any input on this?”

  Luis raised his head slightly. “Fuck you,” he said, but his voice was tight. “This is bullshit.”

  “Okay,” I said Daniel Begay. “We’ll do the leg thing. I’d better use the other gun. The police can trace this one.”

  He pulled out the Charter Arms, offered it to me. I was still holding Luis’s wallet in my left hand. I gave him the wallet, took the Charter Arms, stuck the Smith and Wesson into my pocket, aimed the new pistol, and pulled the trigger.

  It went bang, like it was supposed to. Two feet from Luis’s leg, dirt popped off the ground and spattered his jeans. He jerked galvanically and his pompadour suddenly unfolded into shiny black spikes. “Jesus!”

  Daniel Begay said sadly, “That’s not very good. He’s only four feet away. You want me to do it?”

  “It was Pablo,” Luis said in a sudden wheeze. I think he was trying to shout, but you can’t shout very well when you’re lying on your belly.

  “Pablo who?” I asked him.

  He said nothing. His body was stiff and still. He was probably wondering what had happened to his toughness, probably trying to gather it back together.

  I fired again, and this time the dirt kicked up between his legs.

  He arched his head back, his eyes squeezed together. “Jesus Christ, man!”

  “Pablo who?”

  Holding himself immobile, his head still raised, he said, “Pablo Arguelles, in El Paso. He gave me two hundred to come up here and watch you. Until Monday, he said. Let him know where you went.”

  “Where’d you pick me up? Office or house?”

  “Your house.”

  I had given no one in El Paso my home address. But it was listed with my phone number.

  “Why Monday?”

  He shook his head and the black spikes of hair wobbled. “How the hell do I know? Pablo’s crazy. He tells me to do something, I do it.”

  I fired the gun again. This time I missed by only a couple of inches. I was getting the unfamiliar pistol sighted in.

  Under the windbreaker, the muscles of his shoulders were bunched together. “It’s the truth, man, I swear it on my mother!”

  “Tell me about Alice Wright.”

  He cocked his head. “Who?”

  “Alice Wright. In El Paso.”

  “Never heard of her, man. I swear it.”

  “Why did the three of you come after me in El Paso?”

  “That was only business, man. Fifty bucks apiece, me and Ramon, if we helped Pablo bust you some. That was all, man, just bust you, not kill you or nothin’. Not really hurt you, you know?”

  “Why bust me?”

  “I dunno. Pablo says let’s do it, so we do it.”

  Pablo, like Ganado, was evidently a Leader of Men.

  “What about the tires on my car?”

  “What tires, man? Whatta you mean?”

  Maybe someone else had done the tires. “What’d you do Thursday night? After you rousted me at the motel?”

  “Went over to Juarez. To a whorehouse there.”

  “All three of you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s Ramon’s last name?”

  “Gonzalez. Ramon Gonzalez.”

  “What time did you go over to Juarez?”

  “Eleven, eleven-thirty.”

  “What time did you get back?”

  “Not till Friday morning. Ten o’clock.”

  “You know, Luis, it wouldn’t be nice for you to lie to me.”

  “It’s the truth, man. I swear to you.”

  “When did Pablo send you up to follow me?”

  “Last night.”

  “Pablo’s in El Paso now?”

  He lowered his hea
d, shook it. “No, no, man, up in Arizona somewhere—I don’t know where, honest to God. He just told me Arizona, that’s all he said.”

  “He’s there alone?”

  He shook his head. “With Ramon.”

  “What’re they doing in Arizona?”

  “I dunno. I swear it, I dunno.”

  “What kind of car is he driving?”

  “I dunno, man. The Chevy, the one I’m driving, that’s Pablo’s. He was gonna rent a car.”

  I said, “If you don’t know where Pablo is, how do you keep in touch with him?”

  “I call his number, man, in El Paso, and I leave a message on his tape machine. Like I leave a phone number where I’m at. He can call up from anywhere and find out what’s on the machine.”

  “He uses a beeper or a regular phone to get the messages?”

  “Regular phone.”

  “Did you ever see this tape machine? Do you know what brand it is?”

  Some of the cheaper beeperless answering machines require only a single tone as a code to retrieve the messages. If you want to break into one of these machines over the phone line, and pilfer the messages, it doesn’t take you long to run through the digits, zero to nine.

  Luis shook his head. “No, man, I never been to Pablo’s house.”

  “What’s his address?”

  “I dunno, man. I dunno. Somewhere on the west side of El Paso.”

  “What’s the phone number?”

  He told me.

  I turned to Daniel Begay. “Is there a CB radio in the Malibu?”

  He shook his head.

  I asked him, “How far is the nearest telephone?”

  Daniel Begay said, “About twenty miles. At Crownpoint.”

  This dirt track was a side road off the paved highway between Thoreau and Crownpoint. We’d led Luis and the Malibu from the interstate at Thoreau.

  I nodded. I turned to the Malibu. Because of the bend in the road, the car was broadside to me. I fired twice and hit each time, blowing both tires.

  Mighty fine shooting, pilgrim.

  Given ten years I could do it again.

  The Charter Arms was empty, but Luis hadn’t moved. Maybe he hadn’t been counting. Maybe he realized that he couldn’t get to me before I had the Smith and Wesson out. I handed the empty pistol to Daniel and took out the Smith.

  I said to Daniel, “Could you go to the Subaru and start it for me? I’ll be right there.”

  He gave me Luis’s wallet, nodded, and turned and walked slowly off.

  I said to Luis, “I’ll leave your wallet a hundred yards down the road. When I honk the horn, you come get it. Not before. Crownpoint’s to the right when you hit the paved highway. Shouldn’t take you more than five or six hours to reach it. Be a nice refreshing walk, this time of day. When you get back here, and get the tires fixed, you know what you do?”

  “What?” His voice had changed: a wary hope had strengthened it.

  “You drive back to El Paso.”

  “Right, man, right. I’ll do it, man. I will. I swear it.”

  “Because I don’t like you, Luis. Are we clear on that?”

  “Right, sure, man. Absolutely.”

  19

  Ahundred yards down the road, I stopped the Subaru, put it into park, and opened Luis’s wallet. I didn’t know what I was looking for—a scorecard, maybe, so I could learn who the players were—but whatever it was, it wasn’t there.

  A hundred and fifty dollars in tens and twenties, a gas station credit card, a folded red cocktail napkin with a woman’s name and phone number written on it in smudged ballpoint, a battered foil-wrapped Ramses condom. Luis obviously led a rich and rewarding life.

  I tossed the wallet to the side of the road, put the Subaru back into gear, honked the horn once, and drove off.

  “Thanks for the help,” I said to Daniel Begay. “You sounded pretty bloodthirsty back there.”

  He smiled his small smile. “I got some Apache blood, maybe. What did you tell him back there?”

  “I told him to go back to El Paso.”

  “He bounced once as the car hit a bump in the road. “You think he will?”

  “I doubt it. Right now he’s convincing himself that I’m gutless.”

  He nodded. “Because you didn’t kill him.”

  “Yeah.”

  I was moving the Subaru as quickly as I could over the washboard road, up and down the hills, and the car was fighting me, steering wheel spasmodic as we slammed into ruts and gullies.

  Daniel Begay bounced once, twice, three times. He turned to me. “We’re in a hurry?”

  “I’m not very happy,” I said, “with the idea of Luis’s two friends prowling around Arizona. And I’m beginning to worry about the trading post’s phone not working. Those two could be there. Or they could be at Peter Yazzie’s. I think we should get back to the interstate as soon as we can.”

  He nodded. “I got a nephew on the Navajo police. I could call him from Thoreau and ask him to have someone go over to the trading post.”

  It was a good idea, and I said so, but as things turned out, we didn’t have to wait until Thoreau to find the Navajo police. They found us. While we were roaring down the Crownpoint-Thoreau road at ninety miles an hour.

  I heard the siren, looked in the rearview mirror, and saw the patrol car. I pulled the Subaru off the road and put it in park.

  The cop took his time getting out of the cruiser. Waiting, probably, for the radio report on the Subaru’s tag. Finally he opened the door, stepped out, and began to walk toward us with that slow, rolling gait they learn at police academies everywhere. Swagger 101.

  Daniel Begay was twisted round in his seat to look out the rear window. “It’s okay,” he said. “I know him.”

  Unsmiling, big for a Navajo, the cop came to the window and looked down at me through a pair of mirrored sunglasses. They learn how to wear those at the academy, too. “License and registration,” he said.

  “Boyd?” said Daniel Begay.

  The cop lowered his head, took off the sunglasses, and peered into the interior. I leaned back against the seat. The cop said, “Mr. Begay?” And then said something guttural in Navajo.

  Daniel Begay returned the greeting, if that’s what it was, and then said in English, “Boyd, we’re in kind of a hurry. This is an emergency.”

  Boyd glanced at me, his face expressionless.

  “This is my friend Joshua,” said Daniel Begay. “He’s helping me out.”

  Asking him to clarify this didn’t seem like a good idea just then.

  Boyd nodded, tapped the brim of his hat with his index finger. I nodded back. He turned to Daniel Begay, put his large brown hand on the door of the Subaru. “What’s the trouble, Mr. Begay?”

  “We can’t get through to the Ardmore Trading Post. Something’s wrong with the phone out there.”

  Boyd shook his head. “Not the phone. The lines. Someone used a chainsaw on the poles. Three of them.” He shrugged his square shoulders. “Kids, I guess.”

  I said, “When did it happen?”

  He glanced at Daniel Begay, then back at me. He said, “This morning sometime.”

  “Is everything all right at the trading post?”

  “Far as I know.” He started to say something, then frowned. Remembering that he was talking cop business with a civilian.

  Daniel Begay had seen the hesitation. He said, “It’s pretty important, Boyd.”

  Boyd shrugged again. Ignoring me, he told Daniel, “Yesterday they sent somebody out there from Window Rock.” The headquarters of the Navajo Tribal Police was in Window Rock.

  “Why?” Daniel Begay asked.

  “Some homicide investigation down in Texas. El Paso cops wanted to know if the victim made a phone call to the trading post on Thursday night.”

  “Did she?” I asked.

  He glanced at me and frowned again. He was clearly not enjoying this. “Yeah,” he told Daniel. “She was trying to locate some old guy here on the Reservati
on.”

  “Peter Yazzie,” I said.

  Boyd looked at me again and blinked. He turned to Daniel Begay. Sadly he said, “Mr. Begay, I hope sometime you’re gonna tell me what’s going on here.”

  “I promise, Boyd. Who answered the call at the trading post?”

  “The son.” I thought I heard something in his voice—disapproval, maybe, or distaste.

  Daniel Begay said, “He tell the woman where Peter Yazzie lives?”

  “Yes, sir. He did.”

  Daniel Begay nodded. He turned to me. “We should go straight through to Hollister. To Peter Yazzie’s house.”

  I frowned. “I thought you had to be in Gallup.”

  He shook his head. “Not important now. Boyd? Could you ask Window Rock to send someone over to the trading post again? To make sure everyone’s okay?”

  Boyd nodded. “When do I find out what’s happening here, Mr. Begay?”

  “Soon, I think. I’ll call you on the phone. And whoever goes over there, could they find out if anyone else been asking about Peter Yazzie?

  “Could be two men,” I said. “Hispanic. Pablo Arguelles and Ramon Gonzalez. Arguelles is a big guy with a mustache.” The mustache, barely visible under the stocking mask back at my motel, was the only distinguishing feature I could give him.

  Boyd was frowning, balancing his loyalty to the Navajo police against whatever loyalty he owed Daniel Begay.

  Daniel Begay said, “And could someone check on Peter Yazzie in Hollister?”

  Boyd shook his head. “Hollister is state cops. Or the Duke County Sheriff.”

  “You could call someone at the state cops and ask ’em to check.”

  “What do I tell them for a reason?”

  “Tell ’em the murder in Texas. Peter Yazzie could be a witness, maybe. And he could maybe be in big trouble.”

  Boyd nodded sadly. “Okay, Mr. Begay. You’re gonna get back to me, right?”

  “I will. We got to go now, Boyd. The road clear up ahead?”

  Boyd nodded. “No more Navajo patrols. State cops on the interstate.”

  “Thanks, Boyd.” He turned to me. “Let’s go.”

  Boyd frowned again and stepped away from the car. I shifted into drive and put the Subaru back on the highway. As the wagon picked up speed, I turned to Daniel Begay and asked him, “Daniel, do you have a secret identity? Are you really Batman?”