Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 14] (2 page)

The only client in the dining room in Window Rock’s Navajo Inn was
sitting at a table in the corner with a glass of milk in front of him.
He was wearing a droopy gray-felt Stetson and reading the
Gallup
Independent.
Joe Leaphorn
stood at the entrance a moment studying
him. Roy Gershwin, looking a lot older, more weather-beaten and wornout
than he’d remembered him. But then he hadn’t seen him for years—not
since Gershwin had helped him nail a U.S. Forest Service ranger who’d
been augmenting his income by digging artifacts out of Anasazi burials
on a Gershwin grazing lease. That had been at least six years ago,
about the time Leaphorn had starting thinking about retirement. But
they went far back beyond that—back to Leaphorn’s rookie years. Back to
a summer when Leaphorn had arrested one of Gershwin’s hired hands on a
rape complaint — a bad start with a happy ending. That had been the
first time he’d heard Gershwin’s deep, gruff whiskey-ruined voice -an
angry voice telling Leaphorn he’d arrested an innocent man. When he had
answered the telephone this morning, he recognized that odd voice
instantly.

“Lieutenant Leaphorn,” Gershwin had said. “I hear you’re retired
now. Is that right? If it is, I guess I’m trying to impose on you.”

“Mr Gershwin,” Leaphorn had replied. “It’s Mr Leaphorn now, and it’s
good to hear from you.“ He had heard himself saying that with a sort of
surprise. This was what retirement was doing to him. And what lay
ahead. This old rancher had never really been a friend. Just one of
those thousands of people you deal with in a lifetime spent as a cop.
But here he was, genuinely happy to hear his telephone ring. Happy to
have someone to talk to.

But Gershwin had stopped talking. Long silence. The sound of the man
clearing his throat. Then: "I guess this ain’t going to surprise you
much. I mean to tell you I got myself a problem. I guess you’ve heard
that from a lot of people. Being a policeman.”

“Sort of goes with the job,” Leaphorn said. Two years ago he would
have grumbled about this sort of call. Today he wasn’t. Loneliness
conditions.

“Well,” Gershwin said, "I got something I don’t know how to handle.
I’d like to talk to you about it.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“I’m afraid it’s not something you can handle over the telephone,”
Gershwin replied.

So they arranged to meet at three at the Navajo Inn. It was now
three minutes short of that. Gershwin looked up, noticed Leaphorn
approaching, stood and motioned him to the chair across from him.

“Damn good of you to come,” he said. “I was afraid you’d tell me you
were retired now and I should worry somebody else with it.”

“Glad to help if I can,” Leaphorn said. They polished off the
required social formalities faster than usual, discussing the cold, dry
winter, poor grazing, risk of forest fires, agreed that last night’s
weather report sounded like the monsoon season was about to start and
finally got to the point.

“And what brings you all the way down here to Window Rock?”

“I heard on the radio yesterday the FBI’s got that Ute Casino
robbery all screwed up. You know about that?”

“I’m out of the loop on crimes these days. Don’t know anything about
it. But it wouldn’t be the first time an investigation went sour.”

“The radio said they’re looking for a damned airplane,” Gershwin
said. “None of them fellas could fly anything more complicated than a
kite.”

Leaphorn raised his eyebrows. This was getting interesting. The last
he’d heard, those working the case had absolutely no identifications.
But Gershwin had come here to tell him something. He’d let Gershwin
talk.

“You want something to drink?” Gershwin waved at the waiter. “Too
bad you fellows still have prohibition. Maybe one of those pseudo
beers?”

“Coffee’d be good.”

The waiter brought it. Leaphorn sipped. Gershwin sampled his milk.

“I knew Cap Stoner,” Gershwin said. “They oughta not let them get
away with killing him. It’s dangerous to have people like that around
loose.”

Gershwin waited for a response.

Leaphorn nodded.

“Specially the two younger ones. They’re half-crazy.”

“Sounds like you know them.”

“Pretty well"

“You tell the FBI?”

Gershwin studied his milk glass again and found it about half-empty.
Swirled it. He had a long, narrow face that betrayed his seventy or so
years of dry air, windblown sand and dazzling sun, with a mass of
wrinkles and sunburn damage. He shifted his bright blue eyes from the
milk to Leaphorn.

“There’s a problem with that,” he said. “I tell the FBI, and sooner
or later everybody knows it. Usually sooner. They come up there to see
me at the ranch, or they call me. I’ve got a radio-telephone setup, and
you know how that is. Everybody’s listening. Worse than the old party
line.”

Leaphorn nodded. The nearest community to the Gershwin ranch would
be Montezuma Creek, or maybe Bluff if his memory served. Not a place
where visits from well-dressed FBI agents would go unnoticed, or
untalked about.

“You remember that deal in the spring of ’98? The feds decided to
announce those guys they were looking for are dead. But the folks who
snitched on ‘em, or helped the cops, they’re damn sure keeping their
doors locked and their guns loaded and their watchdogs out.”

“Didn’t the FBI say the gang in 1998 were survivalists? Is it the
same people this time?”

Gershwin laughed. “Not if the feds had the names right the last
time.”

“I’ll skip ahead a little,” Leaphorn said, "and you tell me if I
have it figured right. You want the FBI to catch these guys, but in
case they don’t, you don’t want folks to know you turned them in. So
you’re going to ask me to pass along the -"

“Whether or not they catch them,” Gershwin said. “They have lots of
friends.”

“The FBI said the 1998 bandits were part of a survivalist
organization. Is that what you’re saying about these guys?”

“I think they call themselves the Rights Militia. They’re for saving
the Bill of Rights. Making the Forest Service, and the BLM, and the
Park Service people behave so folks can make a living out here.”

“You want to give me these names, and I pass them along to the feds.
What do I say when the feds ask where I got them?”

Gershwin was grinning at him. “You got it partly wrong,” he said.
“I’ve got the names on a piece of paper. I’m going to ask you to give
me your word of honor that you’ll keep me out of it. If you won’t, then
I keep the paper. If you promise, and we shake hands on it, then I’ll
leave the names on the table here and you can pick it up if you want
to.”

“You think you can trust me?”

“No doubt about it,” Gershwin said. “I did before. Remember? And I
know some other people who trusted you.”

“Why do you want these people caught? Is it just revenge for Cap
Stoner?”

“That’s part of it,” Gershwin said. “But these guys are scary. Some
of them anyway. I used to have a little hand in this political stuff
with the ones who started it. But then they got too wild.”

Gershwin had been about to finish his milk. Now he put the glass
down. “Bastards in the Forest Service were acting like they personally
owned the mountains,” he said. “We lived there all our lives, but now
we couldn’t graze. Couldn’t cut wood. Couldn’t hunt elk. And the Land
Management bureaucrats were worse. We were the serfs, and they were the
lords. We just wanted to have some sort of voice with Congress. Get
somebody to remind the bureaucrats who was paying their salaries. Then
the crazies moved in. EarthFirst bunch wanting to blow up the bridges
the loggers were using. That sort of thing. Then we got some New Age
types, and survivalists and Stop World Government people. I sort of
phased out.”

“So some of these guys did the casino job? Was it political?”

“What I hear, it was supposed to be to finance the cause. But I
think some of them needed money to eat,” Gershwin said. “If you’re not
working, I guess you could call that political. But maybe they did want
to buy guns and ammunition and explosives. That sort of stuff. Anyway,
that’s what folks I know in the outfit say. Needed cash to arm
themselves to fight off the federal government.”

“I wonder how much they got,” Leaphorn said.

Gershwin drained his milk. Got up and extracted a folded sheet of
paper from his shirt pocket.

“Here it is, Joe. Am I safe to leave it with you? Can you promise
you won’t turn me in?”

Leaphorn had already thought that through. He could report this
conversation to the FBI. They would question Gershwin. He’d deny
everything. Nothing accomplished.

“Leave it,” Leaphorn said.

Gershwin dropped it on the table, put a dollar beside his milk glass
and walked out past the waiter arriving to refill Leaphorn’s cup.

Leaphorn took a drink. He picked up the paper and unfolded it. Three
names, each followed by a brief description. The first two, Buddy Baker
and George Ironhand, meant nothing to him. He stared at the last one.
Everett Jorie. That rang a faint and distant bell.

Captain Largo looked up from the paper he’d been reading, peered
over his glasses at Sergeant Chee, and said, “You’re a few days early,
aren’t you? Your calendar break?”

“Captain, you forgot to say, 'Welcome Home. Glad to have you back.
Have a seat. Be comfortable.' "

Largo grinned, waved at a chair across from his desk. “I’m almost
afraid to ask it, but what makes you so anxious to get back to work?”

Chee sat. “I thought I’d get back to speed gradually. Find out what
I’ve been missing. How’d you get so lucky not to get us dragged into
another big manhunt as bush beaters for the federals?”

“That was a relief, that airplane business,” Largo said. “On the
other hand, you hate to see people shooting policemen and getting away
with it. Sets another bad example after that summer of ‘98 fiasco. You
want some coffee? Go get yourself a cup, and we’ll talk. I want to hear
about Alaska after you tell me what you’re doing here.”

Chee returned with his coffee. He sipped, sat, waited. Largo
outwaited him.

“OK,” Chee said. “Tell me about the casino robbery. All I know is
what I’ve seen in the papers.”

Largo leaned back in his chair, folded his arms across his generous
stomach. “Just before four last Saturday morning a pickup drives into
the casino lot. Guy gets out, takes out a ladder, climbs up on the roof
and cuts the power lines, telephone lines, everything. Another pickup
pulls in while this is going on and two guys get out wearing camouflage
suits. A Montezuma County deputy, guy named Bai, is standing out there.
Then Cap Stoner comes running out, and they shoot both of ‘em. You
remember Stoner? He used to be a captain with the New Mexico State
Police. Worked out of Gallup. Decent man. Then these two guys get into
the cashier’s room. The money’s all sacked up to be handed to the
Brinks truck. They make everybody lie down, walk out with the money
bags and drive off. Apparently they drove west into Utah because about
daylight a Utah Highway Patrolman tries to stop a speeding truck on
Route 262 west of Aneth, and they shoot holes in his radiator. Pretty
high-powered ammunition according to what Utah tells us.”

Largo paused, pushed his bulky frame out of his swivel chair with a
grunt. “Need some of my coffee, myself,” he said, and headed for the
dispenser in the front office.

Sort
of good to be
back working under Largo
, Chee was thinking. Largo had been his
boss in his rookie year. Cranky, but he knew his business. Then Largo
was coming through the door, holding his cup, talking.

“With the lines out, and all the scared gamblers scrambling around
trying to get away from the casino, or trying to grab some chips, or
whatever you do when the lights go out at the craps table. Anyway, it
took a while before anybody knew what the hell was going on and got the
word out.“ Largo eased back into his chair. “I think just about every
track you can drive on was blocked by sunup, but by then they had a
hell of a lead. Next thing, maybe nine-thirty or so, the word went out
somebody in a pickup had shot at the Utah trooper. That shifted the
focus westward. The next day a couple of deputy sheriffs found a
banged-up pickup abandoned up by the Arizona-Utah border south of
Bluff. It fit the description.”

“They find any tracks? Were they walking out, changing cars or what?”

“Two sets of tracks around the truck, but here came the feds in
their 'copters"—Largo paused, waved his arms in imitation of a
helicopter’s rotors—"and blew everything away.”

“Slow learners,” Chee said. “That’s the same way they fanned away
the tracks we’d found across the San Juan in that big thing in ’98.”

“Maybe we ought to get the Federal Aviation Administration to order
all those things grounded during manhunts,” Largo said.

"They have anything to match them with? Did they find any tracks at
the casino?”

Largo shook his head, paused to sip his coffee, shrugged. “It looked
like we were going to have an encore performance of that 1998 business.
The federals got a command post set up. Everybody was getting into the
act. Regular circus. All we needed was the performing elephants. Had
plenty of clowns.”

Chee grinned.

“You’d have loved to come home to that.”

“I’d have gone right back to Alaska,” Chee said. “How’d the FBI find
out about the airplane?”

“The owner called in to report it stolen. He said he’d been away up
in Denver. When he got home he noticed somebody had broken into his
barn, and the airplane he kept there was gone.”

“Close to where the pickup was abandoned?”

“Mile and a half or so,” Largo said. “Maybe two.”

Chee considered that. Largo watched him.