The Shape Shifter (19 page)

“Not the cake,” Tommy said. “The cake wouldn’t have hurt Mr. Bork. The cake I make is good.”

“Then is it the cherry? Is that it?”

“The cherry might be spoiled. Out in the heat. Fruits get rotted, not preserved properly,” Vang said, his voice so choked that Leaphorn could barely understand him.

“Maybe that was what got the people sick.” The people, Leaphorn thought. Other people? Tommy’s command of the nuances of English was somewhat shaky, but he seemed to have more people than just Mel Bork in mind. Leaphorn considered that, decided to let it wait and come back to that question later.

“Well, let’s not worry about that then,” Leaphorn said.

“I’m curious about how you got acquainted with Mr. Delos.

I guess he worked for our government in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Is that where you met him?”

“In Laos,” Tommy said, staring at the windshield. “In our mountains. A long, long time ago.” Laos? Leaphorn considered that, wishing he had a better recollection of Asian geography and the pattern of that war. If his memory was right, Laos would be on the border of about everything. It would fit Delos’s presumed role as a CIA operative. The CIA was working on all the edges there.

“Is that where you started working for Mr. Delos?”

“My father did,” Tommy said. “And my uncles, and—” he exhaled, shook his head, broke off his study of the wind-172

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shield to look at Leaphorn “—and about everybody in our village. All the Vangs, and Thaos, and the Chues anyway. All the families except the Cheng men. They had mostly joined the Vietcong. And the Pham. I don’t know about them, but I think they were maybe working with the Pathet Lao.”

“You’re not Vietnamese, then?”

“We were Hmong,” Tommy said. “Our people were running out of China. Getting away from the wars that always went. Coming down into the Laos mountains, I think maybe same time Europeans were migrating into America. My older kinfolks still used Chinese words. But the CIA didn’t mind. They recruited the men in our village. We were already having to fight both the Vietnamese and the Pathet Lao. Trying to protect our villages. And then the Americans came in and wanted us to help them fight their war. That how I got acquainted with the colonel. He wasn’t Mr. Delos then. He was Colonel Perkins. He was recruiting my family members.”

“What did this colonel want you to do for him?” Tommy produced a wry-sounding laugh. “I guess you would say he was a collector of information. He would come into our house, and my father and uncles, and the men from the Thao and Chue families would come in and talk. And Mr. Delos would tell each one of them where he wanted them to go, and what he wanted them to watch for. Mostly he would be sending them back into Vietnam to watch the trails the Congs were using. When they got back, Mr. Delos would come again, and they would tell him what they had seen.”

“Did he have you doing anything for him?” Tommy shifted in his seat, wiped his hand across his eyes. “I was too young to be useful at first, and my mother THE SHAPE SHIFTER

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wouldn’t let me go anyway. Then one night my uncle came back, and he said some North Vietnam soldiers had seen them and they had killed my father and my youngest uncle. Or maybe just took them captive. He wasn’t sure, and I never did find out. But after that, the Vietcong came to our village, and my mother and sister and I, we had to hide out in the mountains.”

With that Tommy resumed his study of the windshield, lost in his memories.

Leaphorn waited, as unwilling to interrupt such thoughts as he was to break into a conversation, and just studied Tommy Vang. Very slender, Leaphorn noted.

Very neat. Trimmed. Buttoned. Clean shaven. Shirt cuffs correct. Trousers somehow still properly creased. Vang raised a hand, and wiped the back of it across his cheek.

Wiping away a tear, perhaps. The wind rattled dust against the truck door. Two women hurried past, one carrying a blanket. Tommy sighed, shifted in his seat.

“We were living in a sort of a cave shelter up there in the high ridges after that. The American planes, they came over, very loud, very low, and they bombed our village with napalm. I guess they’d got the word that the Cong had moved in.” He laughed. “I always wondered if Mr. Delos told them. Anyway, we went back down later to pick up what was left.”

With that Tommy lapsed into silence, looking straight ahead.

Overcome with memories, Leaphorn guessed.

“Not much left,” Tommy Vang said. “Even the pigs.

The napalm fire had flooded right over all their pens so they couldn’t get away.” He sighed. “All burned up. I still remember. It smelled like a huge roast feast like we’d
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have for a wedding banquet. That is sort of special with the Hmong elders.” He glanced at Leaphorn, looking doubtful. “I think the way we are supposed to be taught God gave us multiple souls, or maybe I should say duplicate souls, and the duplicate souls live on in our animals.”

“I read about that when I studied anthropology. In an article about Hmong funeral rituals.”

“I don’t know enough about it,” Vang said. “I was too young. The elders were busy with fighting the Vietcong and the others. And hiding. Too busy to teach the children. You understand?”

“I do,” Leaphorn said. “It happened in a different way to some of us. We were hauled away to boarding schools.

But I’d like to know when you finally got reconnected with Mr. Delos?”

“That was later. My mother died and I got put in a refugee camp. Mr. Delos found me there and started paying me a fee to get him information on anyone in the camp who was—” Tommy paused, trying to decide how to explain. “People who were what he called ‘Cong-connected.’

I did that, and then, it was the next summer I think, he came and got me and took me Saigon. I worked for him there. We stayed at a big hotel and he went to work down at the U.S. embassy until the North Vietnamese came in, and the helicopters came in and the Americans got on them and went home. I told him I could find my way back to Klin Vat. I would help rebuild our village and get back with my relatives in the Vang family. Not a good idea, Mr.

Delos said to me.”

Tommy held up an open hand to demonstrate how Mr. Delos had made his case.

“In the first place, Mr. Delos said, he had done some THE SHAPE SHIFTER

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checking and he had learned that between the Pathet Lao and the North Vietnamese army getting their revenge, there didn’t seem to be any Hmong people left from that village.” With that Tommy pulled down one of his fingers.

“In the second place, there wasn’t anything left of the village.” A second finger came down. “It had been hit with that napalm again. And in the third place, Mr. Delos said there didn’t seem to be anyone left in that part of our mountains. He thought the Vangs, and the Chengs, and the Thaos must have all scattered elsewhere to escape the Pathet Lao and the Vietcong.”

Tommy Vang closed his hand, looked down at it. Expression sad.

“But you still want to go back?”

Tommy Vang turned in the seat, and stared at Leaphorn, his expression incredulous. “Of course. Of course. I am all alone here. Alone. Nobody at all here.

And there, I know I could find some of my people. Not many maybe. But there would be somebody there. I think so. I am pretty sure of that.”

He turned away, stared out the side window, silent.

Then he raised his hands, a gesture that encompassed all he was seeing. The dusty wind, the desiccated landscape of high country desert with winter coming on. “It is cold here,” said Vang, talking to the glass. “And there is the green, the warmth, the ferns, the moss, the high grasses, and the waving bamboo. There is the sense of everything being alive. Here all I see is dead. Dead rock, cliffs with snow on them. And the sand.”

A tumbleweed bounced off the windshield. “And that,” Tommy added. “Those damned weeds that are nothing but brittle stems and sharp stickers.”
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“So you’re going back?” Leaphorn said. “You’re planning that? Have you made your plans? Arranged it?” Tommy Vang sighed. “Mr. Delos has told me he will make the arrangements. When the proper time comes, he will send me home.”

“Has he made any plans for that?”

“I don’t know. He doesn’t talk about it. But he said that when he is finished with everything here, he will send me back. Or maybe he will go back with me.” Finished with what? Leaphorn thought. But that question too would wait. Anyway, he thought he knew the answer.

“Would you be going back to Vietnam? Or Laos? I don’t imagine the Hmong have any sort of passport, or entry visas, or that sort of paperwork.”

“If they ever did, they probably wouldn’t by now,” Tommy said. “I guess our mountains are not ours anymore. We fought for the Americans, and the Americans went home.”

“Yes,” Leaphorn said. “We sometimes do things without really knowing what we are doing. Then we say we’re sorry about that. But I guess that doesn’t help much.”

Tommy Vang opened his door. “Would you give me back my piece of fruitcake? I must be going now. I have more things to do.”

“It’s still early,” Leaphorn said. “You said you had come here to talk to me. We haven’t talked much. Did you find out what you wanted to know?”

Vang settled himself into the seat. “I guess I don’t know. I think I found things I didn’t expect.”

“Like what?”

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Vang smiled at Leaphorn. “Like you are a nice man. I didn’t expect that.”

“You didn’t like me?”

“No. Because you are a policeman. I didn’t think I would like a policeman.”

“Why not?”

“I have sometimes heard bad things about them,” Vang said. “Probably not true. Maybe some policeman are bad and some are good.” He smiled, shrugged. “But now I have to go. I have to find a place out here—” he waved both hands in a widespread gesture. “I know its name, but its name is not on my map.”

“Maybe I can help you with that.” He patted Vang’s shoulder. “Maybe that would prove to you that I’m one of the good policemen. What’s the name of the place?” Vang extracted a folded postcard from his shirt pocket. Unfolded it, read from it.

Leaphorn understood “chapter house,” but the rest was lost in Vang’s Hmong interpretation of the message.

“Let me see it,” Leaphorn said, and took the card.

On it was written:

Tomas Delonie. Torreon. Chapter house. Use 371 north,
then Navajo 9 east to Whitehorse Lake, then 12 miles
northeast to Pueblo Pintado, the 9 southeast about
40 miles, then 197 short distance northeast. Look for
Torreon Navajo Mission signs. Ask directions.

“I think you will have troubles finding that place,” Leaphorn said. “I think I should help you.”

“Yes,” Vang said. “This place. Torreon. I not find on my map. Nor some of these roads. They’re not included.

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Not marked.” He showed Leaphorn his map. It was an old Chevron Service Station version.

“An old map,” Leaphorn said. “I have a better one.” Tomas Delonie, he was thinking. Why was Tommy Vang making this trip?

“Mr. Delos gave you these directions, I guess,” Leaphorn said. “He didn’t have a new map. And I would doubt that he knows this eastern side of the Navajo Reservation very well.”

“I guess he wouldn’t,” Vang said.

“But he wrote these directions for you?”

“Oh, yes,” Vang said.

Leaphorn opened his mouth intending to ask why. To learn if Vang would tell him if Delos had explained the reason for this trip and just what he wanted Vang to learn about Delonie. But he wanted to approach that carefully with Vang.

“I guess he wanted to be sure he knew just where Mr. Delonie lives, and where he works, and things like that. Things he’d need to know if he wanted to come and visit him. He didn’t explain it, but it was about like that, I think. He told me just to sort of act like I was a tourist. You know. Asking about things, looking all around. But then he wanted me to be able to tell him what sort of vehicle Mr. Delonie drove—car or truck, what kind, what color. If he lived alone. Things like that. When he went to work.

When he came home. If he had a woman, or anybody else, living with him.”

Vang paused, reached into his jacket pocket. “And he gave me this.”

Vang extracted a very small camera and showed it to Leaphorn.

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“It is one of those new ones with the computer chips,” Vang said, smiling proudly. “Very modern. You look through the finder, and see what you are photographing, and click it. Then if you don’t like it, you can erase it, and shoot again until you get good pictures. What you think?

Pretty nice?”

“He wanted you to photograph Delonie?” That thought surprised Leaphorn.

“No. No. Not like taking his portrait, not anything like that. He said just take casual pictures. Of his house, his truck, things like that. But he didn’t want Mr. Delonie to see me taking pictures. He told me that lots of people don’t like having their pictures taken.”

“Did he want you to question Mr. Delonie about anything?”

“Oh no,” Vang said. “I was just to be acting like a tourist. Just curious. Just looking around. It would be best, Mr.

Delos said, if Mr. Delonie didn’t even notice me.”

“Did he tell you anything about Delonie? About whether he was an old friend? Anything like that?”

“No,” Vang said, “but I don’t think he was a friend.” Leaphorn studied Vang. “What causes you to think that?”

Vang shrugged. “Nothing, really. Just the way he looked when he talked about him. It make me think that Mr. Delonie made Mr. Delos feel nervous. Or something like that, I think.”

Exactly, Leaphorn thought. Mr. Vang is short on information but well armed with an astute intelligence. Smart enough to try to look beyond the bright and shiny surface of external appearances.

“You know, Tommy, I think the only sensible thing for
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us to do is for me to take you there,” Leaphorn said. “We can leave your car here in Crownpoint. Lock it up. We’ll tell whoever’s at the Tribal Police office. They’ll take care of it.”