Talking God Part 3

"Your man, maybe?" the Captain said, his expression somewhere between skeptical and sardonic. "You think it's that dope dealer you been after?"

"Maybe," Fleck said.

He walked the five blocks down to the telephone booth he was using today, thinking about that expression on the Captain's face, and about Mama, and about what he was going to tell The Client. The Captain's expression made it clear that he didn't really believe Fleck was an undercover cop. The old man had seemed convinced enough last summer when Fleck had first taken this job and moved into the apartment. He'd shown the Captain his District of Columbia police detective credentials the third morning he had his shoes s.h.i.+ned. The man had seemed properly impressed then. But weeks ago-how many weeks Fleck couldn't quite decide-Fleck's subconscious began registering some peculiarities. Now he was pretty sure the old man didn't believe Fleck was a cop. But he was also fairly sure the Captain didn't give a d.a.m.n. The old man was playing lookout partly because he enjoyed the game and partly because of the money. The Captain was a neutral. He didn't give a d.a.m.n whether Fleck was part of the law, or outside it, or the Man from Mars.

At that point, Fleck had even considered talking to the Captain about Mama. He was a n.i.g.g.e.r, but he was old and he knew a lot about people. Maybe he'd have some ideas. But talking about Mama was complicated. And painful. He didn't know what to do about her. What could he do? She hadn't been happy out there at Bluewater Home outside Cleveland, and she wasn't happy at this place he'd put her when he came to D.C.-Eldercare Manor. Maybe she wouldn't be happy anywhere. But that wasn't the point right now. The point was Eldercare wanted to be shut of her. And right away.

"We just simply can't put up with it," the Fat Man had told him. "Simply cannot tolerate it. We have to think of our other clients. Look after their welfare. We can't have that woman hara.s.sing them."

"Doing what?" Fleck had asked. But he knew what Mama was doing. Mama was getting even.

"Well," the Fat Man had said, trying to think how to put it. "Well, yesterday she put out her hand and tripped Mrs. Oliver. She fell right on the floor. Might have broken her bones." The Fat Man's hands twisted together at the thought, anxiously. "Old bones break easily, you know. Especially old ladies'."

"Mrs. Oliver has done something to Mama," Fleck said. "I can tell you that right now for dead certain." But he knew he was wasting his breath when he said it.

"No," Fat Man said. "Mrs. Oliver is a most gentle person."

"She did something," Fleck had insisted.

"Well," Fat Man said. "Well, I hadn't meant to say anything about this because old people do funny things and this isn't serious and it's easy to deal with. But your mother steals the silverware at the table. Puts the knives and forks and such things up her sleeve, and in her robe, and slips them into her room." Fat Man smiled a depreciatory smile to tell Fleck this wasn't serious. "Somebody collects them and brings them back when she's asleep, so it doesn't matter. But Mrs. Oliver doesn't know that. She tells us about it. Maybe that was it."

"Mama don't steal," Fleck had said, thinking that would be it all right. Mama must have heard the old woman telling on her. She would never tolerate anybody snitching on her, or on anybody in the family. Snitching was not to be tolerated. That was something you needed to get even for.

"Mrs. Oliver fell down just yesterday," Fleck had said. "You called me before then."

"Well," Fat Man said. "That was extra. I told you on the phone about her pulling out Mr. Riccobeni's hair?"

"She never did no such thing," Fleck had said, wearily, wondering what Mr. Riccobeni had done to warrant such retribution, wondering if pulling out the old man's hair would be enough to satisfy Mama's instinct for evening the score.

But there was no use remembering all that now. Now he had to think of what he could do with Mama, because the Fat Man had been stubborn about it. Get Mama out of there by the end of next week or he would lock her out on the porch. The Fat Man had meant it, and he had gotten that much time out of the son of a b.i.t.c.h only by doing a little very quiet, very mean talking. The kind of talk where you don't say a lot, and you don't say it loud, but the other fellow knows he's about to get his b.a.l.l.s cut off.

With the phone booth in view ahead, Fleck slowed his brisk walk to a stroll, inspecting everything. He glanced at his watch. A little early, which was the way he liked it. The booth was outside a neighborhood movie theater. There was a single car in the lot, an old Chevy which Fleck had noticed before and presumed was owned by the morning cleanup man. Nothing unusual on the street, either. Fleck went into the booth, felt under the stand, found nothing more sinister than dried chewing gum wads. He checked the telephone itself. Then he sat and waited. He was thinking he would just have to be realistic about Mama. There was simply no way he could keep her with him. He'd have to just give up on that idea. He'd tried it and tried it, and each time Mama had gotten even with somebody or other, things had gone to h.e.l.l, and he'd had to move her. The last time, the police had come before he'd gotten her out, and if he hadn't skipped they probably would have committed her.

The phone rang. Fleck picked it up.

"This is me," he said, and gave The Client his code name. He felt silly doing it-like kids playing with their Little Orphan Annie code rings.

"Stone," the voice said. It was an accented voice which to Fleck's ear didn't match an American name like Stone. A Spanish accent. "What do you have for me today?"

"Nothing much," Fleck said. "You gotta remember, there's one of me and seven of them." He paused, chuckled. "I should say six now."

"We're interested in more than just six," the voice said. "We're interested in who they're dealing with. You understand that?"

Fleck didn't like the tone of voice. It was arrogant. The tone of a man used to giving orders to underlings. Mama would call The Client one of Them.

"Well," Fleck said. "I'm doing the best I can, just being one man and all. I haven't seen nothing interesting though. Not that I know of."

"You're getting a lot of money, you know. That's not just to pay for excuses."

"When we get right down to it," Fleck said, "you're owing me some money. There was just two thousand in that package Monday. You owed me another ten."

"The ten is if the job was done right," The Client said. "We don't know that yet."

"What the h.e.l.l you mean? It's been almost a month and not a word about anything in the papers." Fleck was usually very good at keeping his emotion out of his voice. It was one of the skills he prided himself in, one of the tricks he'd learned in the recreation yards of detention centers and jails and, finally, at Joliet. But now you could hear the anger. "I need that money. And I'm going to get it."

"You will get it when we decide nothing went wrong with that job," The Client said. "Now shut up about it. I want to talk to you about Santero. We still don't know where he went when he left the District. That worries us."

And so the man who called himself Stone talked about Santero and Fleck half listened, his mouth stiff and set with his anger. Stone outlined a plan. Fleck told him the number of the pay phone where he would be next Tuesday, blurting it out because he had some things to say to this arrogant son of a b.i.t.c.h. Some rules to lay down, and some understanding that Fleck was n.o.body's n.i.g.g.e.r.

"So that'll be the number and now I want you to listen-" Fleck began, but he heard the line disconnect. He stared at the phone. "You son of a b.i.t.c.h," he said. "You dirty son of a b.i.t.c.h." His voice squeaked with the anger. The rage. This was what Mama had told them about. Him and Delmar. About the ruling cla.s.s. The way they put you down if you let them. Treated you like n.i.g.g.e.rs. Like dogs. And the only way you kept your head up, the only way to keep from being a b.u.m and a wino, was by getting even. Always keeping things even. Always keeping your pride.

He walked back toward his apartment thinking about how he would go about it. Lot of work to be done. They knew who he was, he'd bet a million dollars on that. The shyster pretended otherwise. Elkins pretended that what he called "protective insulation" worked both ways. But lawyers lied. Lawyers were part of Them. Leroy Fleck would be expendable, something to be thrown to the police when he wasn't useful. Safer for everybody to have Fleck dead, or back in lockup. But The Client was where the money came from, so The Client would know everything he wanted to know.

There would be plenty of time to even that up, Fleck thought, because there was nothing he could do until he had Mama taken care of. He had to have another place for her, and that always meant a big advance payment. While he was hunting a place for Mama, he'd find out just who The Client was and where he could find him. Now he was almost certain The Client was an emba.s.sy. Spanish-speaking. Some country that had revolution problems, judging from the work they had him doing.

6.

The trouble was n.o.body was interested. November had become December and the man with the pointed shoes remained nameless, an unresolved problem. Somewhere someone worried and waited for him. Or, if they had guessed his fate, they mourned him. The man had taken on a personality in Joe Leaphorn's mind. Once he would have discussed him with Emma, and Emma would have had something sensible to say.

"Of course no one is interested," Emma would have said in that small, soft voice. "The Bureau doesn't have to take jurisdiction so it's not an FBI problem. And McKinley County has had about five bodies since then to worry about and these bodies are local with relatives who vote. And it didn't happen on the reservation, and it wouldn't be your problem even if it had because it's clearly a homicide, and reservation homicides are the FBI's problem. You're just interested because it's an interesting puzzle." To which he would have said: "Yes. You're right. Now tell me why he was put under those chamisa bushes when it was so tough to get him there, carrying him all the way down the railroad tracks, and explain the Yeib.i.+.c.hai note." And Emma would have said something like, "They wanted the body seen from the train and reported and found, or they stopped the train and put him off."

But Leaphorn couldn't imagine what Emma would have said about the Yeib.i.+.c.hai and Agnes Tsosie. He felt the old, painful, overwhelming need to talk to her. To see her sitting in that old brown chair, working on one of those endless making-something-for-somebody's-baby projects which always kept her hands busy while she thought about whatever problem he'd presented her. A year now, a little more than a year, since she had died. This part of it seemed to get no better.

He turned off the television, put on his coat, and walked out on the porch. It was still snowing a little-just an occasional dry flake. Enough to declare the end of autumn. Inside again, he got his winter jacket from the closet, dropped it on the sofa, turned on the TV again, and sat down. Okay, Emma, he thought, how about the missing dentures? They don't just pop out when one is struck. They're secured. He'd told the pathologist he was curious about those missing false teeth and the man had done some checking during the autopsy. There was not just one question, the doctor had said, but two. The gums showed the victim secured his teeth with a standard fixative. Therefore either the fellow had been killed while his teeth were out, or they had been removed after his death. In light of the way the man was dressed the first seemed improbable. So why remove the teeth? To avoid identification of the victim? Possibly. Would Emma have any other ideas? The second question was exactly the sort which intrigued Leaphorn.

"I didn't find any sign of any of those gum diseases, or those jawbone problems, which cause dentists to remove teeth. Everything was perfectly healthy. There was some sign of trauma. The upper right molars, upper left incisor, had been broken in a way that caused some trauma to the bone and left resulting bone lesions." That's what the pathologist had said. He had looked up from his report at Leaphorn and said: "Do you know why his teeth are missing?"

So tell me, Emma, Leaphorn thought. If you're so smart, you tell me why such a highcla.s.s gentleman got his teeth extracted. And why.

As he thought it, he heard himself saying it aloud. He pushed himself out of the chair, embarra.s.sed. "Crazy," he said, also aloud. "Talking to myself."

He switched off the TV again and retrieved the coat. It was colder but no longer snowing. He brushed the feathery deposit from the winds.h.i.+eld with his sleeve, and drove.

Eastbound through Gallup, he saw Kennedy's sedan parked at the Zuni Truck Stop Cafe. Kennedy was drinking tea.

"Sit," Kennedy said, indicating the empty bench across the booth table from him. He extracted the tea bag from his cup and held it gingerly by its string. "Peppermint," he said. "You ever drink this stuff?"

Leaphorn sat. "Now and then," he said.

"What brings you off the reservation on such an inclement Sat.u.r.day evening?"

What, indeed? Old friend, I am running from Emma's ghost, Leaphorn thought. I am running from my own loneliness. I am running away from craziness.

"I'm still curious about your man with the pointed shoes," Leaphorn said. "Did you ever get him identified?"

Kennedy gazed at him over the cup. "Nothing on the fingerprints," he said. "I think I told you that. Nothing on anything else, either."

"If you found his false teeth, could you identify him from that?"

"Maybe," Kennedy said. "If we knew where he was from, then we could find out who made that sort of denture. Probably we could."

The waitress appeared with a menu. "Just coffee," Leaphorn said. He had no appet.i.te this evening.

"My wife tells me coffee is giving me the night sweats. The caffeine is making me jumpy," Kennedy said. "She's got me off on tea."

Leaphorn nodded. Emma used to do such things to him.

"That guy's sheriff's office business anyway," Kennedy said. "I had a hunch he'd be my baby if he was identified. Just by the looks of him. He looked foreign. Looked important." He grinned. "Kinda nice, not having him identified."

"How hard did you try?"

Kennedy glanced at him over the teacup, mildly surprised at Leaphorn's tone.

"The usual," he said. "Prints. Clothes were tailor-made. So were the shoes. We sent them all back to Was.h.i.+ngton. Sent photographs, too. They didn't match anyone on the missing list." He shook his head. "Nothing matched anywhere. Nada Nada. Absolutely nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Lab decided the clothes were foreign made. European or South American probably. Not Hong Kong."

"That's a big help," Leaphorn said. He sipped the coffee. It was fresh. Compared to the instant stuff he'd been drinking at home it was delicious.

"It confirmed my hunch, I think," Kennedy said. "If we ever get that sucker identified, it will be a federal case. He'll be some biggie in drugs, or moving money illegally. Something international."

"Sounds like it," Leaphorn said. He was thinking of a middle-aged woman sitting somewhere wondering what had happened to Pointed Shoes. He was wondering what circ.u.mstances brought a man in old, worn, lovingly polished custom-built shoes to die amid the chamisa, sage, and snakeweed east of Gallup. He was wondering about the fatal little puncture at the base of his skull. "Anything new about the cause of death? The weapon?"

"Nothing changed. It's still a thin knife blade inserted between the first vertebra and the base of the skull. Still a single thrust. No needless cuts or punctures. Still a real pro did it."

"And what brings a real pro to Gallup? Does the Bureau have any thoughts on that?"

Kennedy laughed. "You caught me twenty-eight years too late, Joe. When I was on the green side of thirty and still bucking for J. Edgar's job, then this one would have worried me to death. Somewhere back there about murder case three hundred and nine it dawned on me I wasn't going to save the world."

"You ran out of curiosity," Leaphorn said.

"I got old," Kennedy said. "Or maybe wise. But I'm curious about what brings you off the reservation in this kind of weather."

"Just feeling restless," Leaphorn said. "I think I'm going to drive out there where the body was."

"It'll be dark by the time you could get out there."

"If the pathologist is right, it was dark when that guy got knifed. The night before we found him. You want to come along?"

Kennedy didn't want to come along. Leaphorn cruised slowly down Interstate 40, his patrol car causing a brief bubble of uneasy sixty-five-mile-an-hour caution in the flood of eastbound traffic. The cold front now was again producing intermittent snow, flurries of small, feathery flakes which seemed as cold and dry as dust, followed by gaps in which the western horizon glowed dully with the dying day. He angled off the highway at the Fort Wingate interchange and stopped where the access road met the old fort's entrance route. He sat a moment, reviving the question he raised when he'd seen the body. Any link between this obsolete ammunition depot-long on the Pentagon's list for abandonment-and a corpse left nearby wearing clothing cut by a foreign tailor? Smuggling out explosives? From what little Leaphorn knew about the mile after mile of bunkers here, they held the sh.e.l.ls for heavy artillery. There was nothing one would sneak out in a briefcase-or find a use for if one did. He restarted the car and drove under the interstate to old U.S. Highway 66, and down it toward the Sh.e.l.l Oil Company's refinery at Iyanbito. The Santa Fe railroad had built the twin tracks of its California-bound main line here, paralleling the old highway with the towering pink ramparts of Nashodishgish Mesa walling in this corridor to the north. Leaphorn parked again, pulling the car off in the snakeweed beside the pavement. From this point it was less than four hundred yards to the growth of chamisa where the body of Pointed Shoes had been laid. Leaphorn checked the right-of-way fence. Easy enough to climb through. Easy enough to pa.s.s that small body over. But that hadn't been done. Not unless whoever did it could cross four hundred yards of soft, dusty earth without leaving tracks.

Leaphorn climbed through the fence and walked toward the tracks. A train was coming from the east, creating its freight train thunder. Its locomotive headlight made a dazzling point in the darkness. Leaphorn kept his eyes down, the brim of his uniform hat shading his face, walking steadily across the brushy landscape. The locomotive flashed past, pushed by three other diesels and trailing noise, towing flatcars carrying piggyback truck trailers, and then a parade of tank cars, then hopper cars, then cars carrying new automobiles stacked high, then old slab-side freight cars, and finally a caboose. Leaphorn was close enough now to see light in the caboose window. What could the brakeman in it see? Could some engineer have seen two men (three men? four men? The thought was irrational) carrying Pointed Shoes along the right of way to his resting place?

He stood watching the disappearing caboose lights and the glare of an approaching eastbound headlight on the next track. The snow was a little heavier now, the wind colder on his neck. He pulled up his jacket collar, pulled down the hat brim. What he didn't know about this business had touched something inside Leaphorn-a bitterness he usually kept so submerged that it was forgotten. Under this dreary cold sky it surfaced. If Pointed Shoes had been something different than he was, someone too important to vanish unmissed and unreported, someone whose tailored suit was not frayed, whose shoe heels were not worn, then the system would have answered all these questions long ago. Train schedules would have been checked, train crews located and interviewed. Leaphorn s.h.i.+vered, pulled the jacket tighter around him, looked down the track trying to get a reading on what an engineer could see along the track in the glare of his headlight. From the high vantage point of the cabin, he could see quite a lot, Leaphorn guessed.

The freight rumbled past, leaving silence. Leaphorn wandered down the track, and away from it back toward the road. Then he heard another train coming from the east. Much faster than the freights. It would be the Amtrak, he thought, and turned to watch it come. It whistled twice, probably for the crossing of a county road up ahead. And then it was roaring past. Seventy miles an hour, he guessed. Not yet slowing for its stop at Gallup. He smiled, remembering the suggestion he had put into Emma's voice-that maybe they stopped the Amtrak and put him off. He was close enough to see the heads of people at the windows, people in the gla.s.s-roofed observation car. People with a fear of flying, or rich enough to afford not to fly. Maybe they stopped the Amtrak and put him off, he thought. Well, maybe they did. It seemed no more foolish than his vision of a platoon of men carrying Pointed Shoes down the tracks.

Bernard St. Germain happened to be the only railroader who Leaphorn knew personally-a brakeman-conductor with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad Company. Leaphorn called him from the Fina station off the Iyanbito interchange and got the recording on St. Germain's answering machine. But while he was leaving a message, St. Germain picked up the receiver.

"I have a very simple question," Leaphorn said. "Can a pa.s.senger stop an Amtrak train? Do they still have that cord that can be pulled to set the air brakes, like you see in the old movies?"

"Now there's a box in each car, like a fire alarm box," St. Germain said. "They call it the 'big hole lever.' A pa.s.senger can reach in there and pull it."

"And it stops the train?"

"Sure. It sets the air brakes."

"How long would it be stopped?"

"That would depend on circ.u.mstances. Ten minutes maybe. Or maybe an hour. What's going on?"

"We had a body beside the tracks east of Gallup last month. I'm trying to figure out how it got there."

"I heard about it," St. Germain said. "You think somebody stopped the Amtrak and took the body off?"

"Just a thought. Just a possibility."

"What day was it? I can find out if somebody pulled the big hole lever."

Leaphorn gave him the date of the death of Pointed Shoes.

"Yeah. All that stuff has to be reported," St. Germain said. "Any time a train makes an unscheduled stop for any reason you have to turn in a delay report. And that has to be radioed in immediately. I'll find out for you Monday."

7.

One is not supposed to deal with one's personal mail while on duty in the Navajo Tribal Police Office at s.h.i.+prock. Nor is one supposed to receive personal telephone calls. On Monday, Officer Jim Chee did both. He had a fairly good reason.

The post office would not deliver mail to Chee's little aluminum house trailer parked under the cottonwoods beside the San Juan River. Instead, Chee picked it up at the post office each day during his lunch break. On Monday his portion was an L. L. Bean catalog for which he had sent off a coupon, and a letter from Mary Landon. He hurried back to the office with them, put the catalog aside, and tore open the letter.

"Dearest Jim," it began. From that excellent beginning, it went downhill fast.