The Fallen Man

by Tony Hillerman

  “I see Louise has been sailing the garage sales again. Quite an acquisition there,” he said, nodding toward the thing. He laughed. “Louise is a wonderful lady, but I wonder about her taste sometimes.”

  Janet had no comment.

  Chee said: “What’s it for?” And waited, and belatedly understood that he should have kept his stupid mouth shut.

  “It’s called ‘Technic Inversion Number Three, Side View,’” Janet said.

  “Remarkable,” Chee said. “Very interesting.”

  “I found it in the Kremont Gallery,” Janet said, glum. “The artist is a man named Egon Kuzluzski. The critic at the Washington Post called him the most innovative sculptor of the decade. An artist who finds beauty and meaning in the technology which is submerging modern culture.”

  “Very complex,” Chee said. “And the colors . . . “ He couldn’t think of a way to finish the sentence.

  “I really thought you would like it,” Janet said. “I’m sorry you don’t.”

  “I do,” Chee said, but he knew it was too late for that. “Well, not really. But I think it takes time to understand something that’s so innovative. And then tastes vary, of course.”

  Janet didn’t respond to that.

  “It’s the reason they have horse races,” Chee said, and attempted a chuckle. “Differences of opinion, you know.”

  “I ran into something interesting in Washington,” Janet said, in a fairly obvious effort to cut off this discussion. “I think it was why everybody was so cooperative with our proposals. Crime on Indian reservations has become very chic inside the Beltway. Everybody had read up on narcotics invading Indian territory, and Indian gang problems, Indian graffiti, Indian homicides, child abuse, the whole schmear. All very popular with the Beltway intelligentsia. We have finally made it into the halls of the mighty.”

  “I guess that would fall into the bad news, good news category,” Chee said, grinning with relief at being let off the hook.

  “Whatever you call it, it means everybody is looking for our expertise these days.”

  Chee’s grin faded. “You got a job offer?”

  “I didn’t mean me. But one of the top assistants in BIA Law and Order wanted to let me know they’re recruiting experienced reservation cops with the right kind of credentials for Civil Service, and I heard the same thing over at Justice.” She smiled at him. “At Justice they actually asked me to be a talent scout for them, and when they told me what they wanted it sounded like they were describing you.” She patted him on the leg. “I told ’em I’d already signed you up.”

  “Thank God for that,” Chee said. “I did time in Washington a couple of times, remember? At the FBI academy for their training course, and once on an investigation.” He shuddered, remembering. At the academy he had been the tolerated rube, one of “them.” But they would, naturally, look on Janet as one of “us.” It was a fact he’d have to find a way to deal with.

  Janet removed her hand.

  “Really, Jim, Washington’s a nice place. It’s cleaner than most cities, and something beautiful every place you look and there’s always—”

  “Beautiful what? Buildings? Monuments? There’s too much smog, too much noise, too much traffic, too damn many people everywhere. You can’t see the stars at night. Too cloudy to see the sunset.” He shook his head.

  “There’s the breeze coming in off the Potomac,” Janet said. “And the clean salty smell of the bay, and seafood fresh from the ocean and good wine. In April, the cherry blossoms, and the green, green hills, and the great art galleries, and theater, and music.” She paused, waved her hands, overcome by the enormous glories of Washington’s culture. “And the pay scales are about double what either one of us can make here—especially in the Justice Department.”

  “Working in the J. Edgar Hoover Building,” Chee said. “That’d be a real kick. That old blackmailer should have been doing about twenty years for misuse of public records, but they named the building after him. At least it’s an appropriately ugly building.”

  Janet let that one lie, sipped her wine, reminded Chee his coffee was getting cold. He tested it. She was right.

  “Jim,” she said, “that concert was absolutely thrilling. It was the Philadelphia Orchestra. The annual Founders Society affair. The First Lady was there, and all sorts of diplomats—all white tie and the best jewels dug out of the safety-deposit boxes. And Mozart. You like Mozart.”

  “I like a lot of Mozart,” Chee said.

  He took a deep breath. “It was one of those members-only things, I guess,” he said. “Members and guests.”

  “Right,” she said, smiling at him. “I was mingling with the crème de la crème.”

  “I’ll bet your old law firm is a member,” Chee said. “Probably a big donor.”

  “You betcha,” Janet said, still smiling. Then she realized where Chee was headed. The smile went away.

  “You’re going to ask me who took me,” she said.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “I was a guest of John McDermott,” she said.

  Chee sat silent and motionless. He had known it, but he still didn’t want to believe it.

  “Does that bother you?”

  “No,” Chee said. “I guess not. Should it?”

  “It shouldn’t,” she said. “After all, we go way back. He was my teacher. And then I worked with him.”

  He was looking at her. Wondering what to say. She flushed. “What are you thinking?” she said.

  “I’m thinking I had it all wrong. I thought you detested the man for the way he treated you. The way he used you.”

  She looked away. “I did for a while. I was angry.”

  “But not now? No longer angry?”

  “The Navajo way,” she said. “You’re supposed to get yourself back into harmony with the way the world is.”

  “Did you know he’s out here again?”

  She nodded.

  “Did you know he’s hired Joe Leaphorn to look into that Fallen Man business?”

  “He told me he was going to try,” she said.

  “I wondered how he learned about the skeleton being identified as Harold Breedlove,” Chee said. “It wasn’t the sort of story that would have hit the Washington Post.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Did you tell him?”

  “Why not?” she said, staring at him. “Why the hell not?”

  “Well, I don’t know. The man you’re going to marry is on the telephone reminding you he loves you. And you ask him about a case he’s working on, and so he sort of violates police protocol and tells you the skeleton has been identified.” He stopped. This wasn’t fair. He’d held this anger in for too many hours. He had heard his voice, thick with emotion.

  She was still staring at him, face grim, waiting for him to continue.

  “So?” she said. “Go on.”

  “So I’m not exactly sure what happened next. Did you call him right away and tell him what you’d learned?”

  She didn’t respond to that. But she edged a bit away from him on the sofa.

  “One more question and then I’ll drop it. Did that son of a bitch ask you to get that information out of me? In other words, I want to know whether he—”

  Janet was on her feet.

  “I think you’d better go now,” she said.

  He got up. His anger had drained away now. He simply felt tired and sick.

  “Just one more thing I’d like to know,” he said. “It would tell me something about just how important this business is to the Breedlove Corporation. In other words if you’d told him about the skeleton being found up there when you first got to Washington, it might naturally have reminded McDermott of Hal Breedlove disappearing. And he’d want to know who the skeleton belonged to. But if it was already on his mind even before that, if he brought it up instead of you, then it would mean a higher level of—it would mean they already—”

  “Go away,” Janet said. She handed him the videotape. “And tak
e this with you.”

  He took the tape.

  “Janet,” he said. “Did you recommend that he hire Leaphorn to work for him?”

  He asked that before he noticed the angry tears in Janet’s eyes. She didn’t answer and he didn’t expect her to.

  DECEMBER CAME TO THE FOUR CORNERS but winter lingered up in the Utah mountains. It had buried the Wasatch Range under three feet and ventured far enough south to give Colorado’s San Juans a snowcap. But the brief post-Halloween storm that had whitened the slopes of Ship Rock and the Chuskas proved to be a false threat. It was dry again across the Navajo Nation—skies dark blue, mornings cool, sun dazzling. The south end of the Colorado Plateau was enjoying that typically beautiful autumn weather that makes the inevitable first blizzard such a dangerous surprise.

  Beautiful or not, Jim Chee was keeping himself far too busy to enjoy it—even if his glum mood would have allowed it. He had learned that he could handle administrative duties if he tried hard enough, and that he would never, ever enjoy them. For the first time in his life, he felt no sense of pleasure as he went to work. But the work got done. He made progress. The vacation schedules were established in a way that produced no serious discontent among the officers who worked with him. A system had been devised whereby whatever policemen who happened to be in the Hogback neighborhood would drop in on Diamonte’s establishment for a friendly chat. This happened several times a week, thus keeping Diamonte careful and his customers uneasy without giving him any solid grounds for complaint. As a by-product, it had also produced a couple of arrests of young fellows who had been ignoring fugitive warrants.

  On top of that, his budget for next year was about half finished and a plan had been drafted for keeping better track of gasoline usage and patrol car maintenance. This had produced an unusual (indeed, unprecedented in the experience of Acting Lieutenant Jim Chee) smile on the face of Captain Largo. Even Officer Bernadette Manuelito seemed to be responding to this new efficiency in Chee’s criminal investigation domain.

  This came about after the word reached the ear of Captain Largo (and very shortly thereafter the ear of Acting Lieutenant Chee) that Mr. Finch had nailed a pair of cattle-stealing brothers so thoroughly that they had actually admitted not just rustling five unweaned calves but also about six or seven other such larcenies from the New Mexico side of Chee’s jurisdiction. So overwhelming was the evidence, the captain said, that they had plea-bargained themselves into jail at Aztec.

  “Well, good,” Chee had said.

  “Well, goddammit,” Largo replied, “why can’t we nail some of those bastards ourselves?”

  Largo’s imperial “we” had actually meant him, Chee realized. He also realized, before this uncomfortable conversation ended, that Finch had revealed to Largo not only Chee’s ignorance of heifer curiosity but how he and Officer Manuelito had screwed up Finch’s trap out by Ship Rock. Chee had walked down the hall away from this meeting with several resolutions strongly formed. He would catch Finch’s favorite cow thief before Finch could get his hands on him. Having beaten Finch at Finch’s game, he would resign his role as acting lieutenant and go back to being a real policeman. There would be no more trying to be a bureaucrat to impress Janet. And to accomplish the first phase of this program he would shift Manuelito over to work on rustler cases—she and Largo being the only ones in the Shiprock District who took it seriously.

  Officer Bernadette Manuelito responded to this shift in duties by withdrawing her request for a transfer. At least, that was Jim Chee’s presumption. Jenifer had another notion. She had noticed that the frequent calls between the lady lawyer in Window Rock and the acting lieutenant in Shiprock had abruptly ceased. Jenifer was very good at keeping the Shiprock District criminal investigation office running smoothly because she made it her business to know what the hell was going on. She made a couple of calls to old friends in the small world of law enforcement down at Window Rock. Yes, indeed. The pretty lawyer had been observed shedding tears while in conversation with a lady friend in her car. She had also been seen having dinner at the Navajo Inn with that good-looking lawyer from Washington. Things, it seemed, were in flux. Having learned this, it was Jenifer’s theory that Officer Manuelito would learn of it, too—not as directly perhaps, or as fast, but she would learn of it.

  Whatever her motives, Manuelito seemed to like her new duties. She stood in front of Chee’s desk, looking excited, but not about rustling.

  “That’s what I said,” she said. “They showed up at old Mr. Maryboy’s place last night. They told him they wanted trespass permission on his grazing lease. They wanted to climb Ship Rock.”

  “And it was George Shaw and John McDermott?” Chee said.

  “Yes, sir,” Officer Manuelito said. “That’s what they told him. They paid him a hundred dollars and said if they did any damage they’d pay him for that.”

  “My God,” Chee said. “You mean those two lawyers are going to climb Ship Rock?”

  “Old man Maryboy said the little one had climbed it before. Years ago. He said most of the white people just sneaked in and climbed it, but George Shaw had come to his house to get permission. He remembered that. How polite Shaw had been. But this time Shaw said they were bringing a team of climbers.”

  “So the tall one with the mustache probably isn’t going up,” Chee said, wondering if he sounded disappointed. But should he be disappointed? Would having McDermott fall off a cliff solve his problem with Janet? He didn’t think so.

  “They didn’t say why they were going up there, I guess,” Chee said.

  “No, sir. I asked him about that. Mr. Maryboy said they didn’t tell him why.” She laughed, showing very pretty white teeth. “He said why do white men do anything? He said he knew a white fellow once who was trying to get a patent on a cordless bungee jumper.”

  Chee rewarded that with a chuckle. The way he’d heard it, it was a stringless yo-yo, but Maryboy had revised it to fit mountain climbers.

  “But what I wanted to tell you about was business,” Officer Manuelito said. “Mr. Maryboy told me he was missing four steers.”

  “Maryboy,” Chee said. “Let’s see. He has—”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “That’s his lease where we found the loose fence posts. Where somebody was throwing the hay over the fence. I went by his place to tell him about that. I was going to give him a notebook and ask him to keep track of strange trucks and trailers. He said I was a little late, but he took the notebook and said he’d help.”

  “Did he say how late?” Maryboy hadn’t reported a cattle theft. Chee was sure of that. He checked on everything involving rustling every day. “Did he say why he hadn’t reported the loss?”

  “He said he missed ’em sometime last spring. He was selling off steers and came up short. And he said he didn’t report it because he didn’t think it would do any good. He said when it happened before, a couple of times, he went in and told us about it but he never did get his animals back.”

  That was one of the frustrations Chee had been learning to live with in dealing with rustling. People didn’t keep track of their cattle. They turned them out to graze, and if they had a big grazing lease and reliable water maybe they’d only see them three or four times a year. Maybe only at calving time and branding time. And if you did see them, maybe you wouldn’t notice if you were short a couple. Chee had spent his boyhood with sheep. He could tell an Angus from a Hereford but beyond that one cow looked a lot like every other cow. He could understand how you wouldn’t miss a couple, and if you did, what could you do about it? Maybe the coyotes had got ’em, or maybe it was the little green men coming down in flying saucers. Whatever, you weren’t going to get ’em back.

  “So we put an X on our map and mark it ‘unreported,’” Chee said, “which doesn’t help much.”

  “It might,” Officer Manuelito said. “Later on.”

  Chee was extracting their map from his desk drawer. He kept it out of sight on the theory that everyone in the office exce
pt Manuelito would think this project was silly. Or, worse, they would think he was trying to copy Joe Leaphorn’s famous map. Everybody in the Tribal Police seemed to know about that and the Legendary Lieutenant’s use of it to exercise his theory that everything fell into a pattern, every effect had its cause, and so forth.

  The map was a U.S. Geological Survey quadrangle chart large enough in scale to show every arroyo, hogan, windmill, and culvert. Chee pushed his in basket aside, rolled it out and penned a tiny blue ? on the Maryboy grazing lease with a tiny 3 beside it. Beside that he marked in the date the loss had been discovered.

  Officer Manuelito looked at it and said: “A blue three?”

  “Signifies unreported possible thefts,” Chee said. “Three of them.” He waved his hand around the map, indicating a scattering of such designations. “I’ve been adding them as we learn about them.”

  “Good idea,” Manuelito said. “And add an X there, too. Maryboy is going to be a lookout for us.” She pulled up a chair, sat, leaned her elbows on the desk, and studied the chart.

  Chee added the X. The map now had maybe a score of those, each marking the home of a volunteer equipped with a notebook and ballpoint pen. Chee had bought the supplies with his own money, preferring that to trying to explain this system to Largo. If it worked, which today didn’t seem likely to Chee, he would decide whether to ask for a reimbursement of his twenty-seven-dollar outlay.

  “Funny how this is already working out,” Manuelito said. “I thought it would take months.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the patterns you talked about,” she said. “How those single-animal thefts tend to fall around the middle of the month.”

  Chee looked. Indeed, most of the 1s that marked single-theft sites were followed by mid-month dates. And a high percentage of those midmonth dates were clustered along the reservation border. But what did that signify? He said: “Yeah.”

  “I don’t think we should concentrate on those,” she said, still staring thoughtfully at the map. “But if you want me to, I could check with the bars and liquor stores around Farmington and try to work up a list of guys who come in about the middle of the month with a fresh supply of money.” She shook her head. “It wouldn’t prove anything, but it would give us a list of people to look out for.”