Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 17] (3 page)

Plymale sipped. Chandler waited. Now the old bastard would finally get to the diamond. Probably he wasn’t going to ask any more about that homicidal mistake Chandler had made in Portland. Probably it was forgotten now. Even by that homicide detective. A cold, cold case. He sipped his drink. Enjoyed the breeze. Someday he’d be able to afford this lifestyle without putting up with this arrogant treatment.

“Luggage raining down, too,” Plymale said. “Suitcases, handbags, those little pet-carrier cages. They found one with a bulldog in it. One with a parrot. Scattering down like a sort of weird hailstorm.”

Plymale laughed, enjoying this. “Imagine that. I’d like to have seen it.”

“Clarke, too?”

“What?”

“Did John Clarke fall, too?”

“Now, that’s a dumb question,” Plymale said. “Everybody fell. Pilots, copilots, stewardesses, men, women, children, at least two babies. Some still in the planes, some doing a free fall.”

“Did he have the diamond he was bringing for his bride?”

“Probably. He said he was bringing it. He was on the plane when it left LAX. No way to get off.” He rattled what was left of the ice in his drink, looked at the glass, shook his head.

The old bastard is teasing me, Chandler thought. To hell with him. To hell with this.

“Look,” Chandler said. “I want to know about this job you brought me down here to tell me about. I guess you want me to find something. Maybe John Clarke is still alive. Maybe he didn’t get on that plane. Maybe you want me to find what’s left of his body if he was on it. Or am I looking for that remarkable diamond he was bringing his lady?”

“You’re not very good at guessing,” Plymale said. “Nor sitting still and listening.”

“Nor playing games, either,” Chandler said. “What do you want me to do? And what do I get out of it?”

“I want you to find John Clarke’s left arm,” Plymale said, and laughed. “How about that? And if you don’t find it, I want you to make damn sure nobody else finds it.”

Chandler considered this. He glanced at Plymale, who was grinning at him. He finished his drink, put on his sandals, pushed himself out of the chair, and looked down at Plymale.

Plymale’s grin went away. “If you walk off now, you’ll have been wasting my time and my money,” the old man said. “I’ll have to find somebody else to do this. You’ll be back doing your nickel-and-dime skip-tracing jobs. Chasing after the bond jumpers. And you’ll be wondering what you missed.”

“Okay,” Chandler said. “Then tell me.”

“Clarke’s left arm seems to have been torn off. The wing of one of those planes cut through the passenger section of the other one. Maybe that did it. Or maybe when he was thrown out of the plane in the collision. Maybe when his body tumbled down a cliff.” Plymale shrugged. “Doesn’t matter how. What matters is that it was his left arm, because Clarke had one of those security cases attached to his left wrist. Handcuffed, sort of. Like the devices State Department couriers used to carry secret stuff. Jewelry dealers and some big-currency brokers used to use ’em, too. Lock them on, lock the case, nobody would have the second key but the person who was getting the delivery.”

“Sure,” Chandler said.

“Anyway, sometime after the disaster, a fellow working at the canyon bottom saw part of the arm—hand, wrist, forearm, pretty much all of it, I think it was. It was sticking out of a pile of driftwood and trash at one of those
Colorado River waterfalls. He saw the forearm with the handcuff on it and the box attached to a chain. He even saw a tattoo on the bicep. Claimed he did, anyway. But he couldn’t get to it. Went back to the place the next day with some help, but the river had risen and swept away the flotsam. And the arm with it, or so we presume. Who knows? Could be somebody else came along and fished it out.”

“And got the diamond case?”

Plymale shook his head. “Maybe. Anyway, that’s the end of that phase of the story.”

“Why the security case?” Chandler asked. “He could have carried that diamond ring for his bride in his pocket.”

“Clarke was managing part of his old man’s jewelry business. He’d gone to the coast to bring back a shipment of ‘special-cut’ diamonds for the rich end of his trade. They were the very best, blue-white, perfect gems, specially cut for the cream of the elite. I think there was seventy-something of them listed in the claim, all at least two and a half carats. The airline insurance company paid its hundred-thousand maximum limit for the loss. People in the business guess they’d have been worth a hundred times that, even at prices then. Today, who knows. Smallest one would probably sell for more than twenty thousand. Say double that for an average, and then multiply it by about seventy-five. Many multiple millions.”

Chandler was no longer bored. Or tired.

“And they were never recovered?”

“Not legally, anyway. Not reported and returned to owner. That’s the problem,” Plymale said. “Maybe they have been. Maybe we’re trying to find who has them now.”

That didn’t make sense to Chandler. This old man was not going to be somebody he could trust, he thought. Ironic, he thought. Neither was he.

“It seems to me if somebody had found them, they’d have been cashed in by now,” Chandler said. “Don’t you think?”

“If they had been put on the market, we’d know about it. The Clarke family and the insurance company had the alert out to jewelry dealers. Here and in Europe and everywhere else. The DeBeers monopoly keeps an eye out, too, and those stones were rare enough at their price and that special cut so they’d have been noticed. And they haven’t been,” Plymale said.

He checked his empty glass, put it down, looked at Chandler. “Not until this one showed up in that robbery in New Mexico.”

“Oh? You going to tell me about that? Now we’re getting to the bottom line.” Chandler had been imagining finding that jewel container. Leather maybe, or some tough plastic. Zipper would be locked. He’d cut it open. Pour them out into his palm. One by one. Examine them. Estimate their worth.

“Arm hasn’t been found, either,” Plymale said.

Chandler laughed. “Who cares about that damned arm?”

“I do. A lot. And I think you will, too, if you want this job,” Plymale said. He studied Chandler, waiting for Chandler to ask him why.

“Why?”

“Those diamonds are just a chance to make some walking-around money on the side,” Plymale said. “Just peanuts. But the arm is what’s important.”

Chandler’s expression was puzzled. No need to fake it.

“This woman Clarke was coming home to marry, her daughter is into that psychic stuff. Or claims she is. Crystal gazing, pyramid power, all that flaky stuff. At least that’s what we hear. Her name’s Joanna Craig. Lives in New York. She’s been running some little ads out in Grand Canyon country, spreading the word among National Park guides, tour directors, so forth, that there’s a hundred-thousand-dollar reward for that arm.”

“Well, now,” Chandler said. “Do you know why?”

“We are told that she claims she has received a psychic message from young Clarke from beyond the grave. In this dream she claims this Clarke ghost tells her his missing arm is hurting him. He tells her she’s his daughter and she must find that arm of his and get it buried with the rest of him.”

Chandler noticed he was smiling.

“That’s her story,” Plymale said. “Trouble is most of those bodies were so torn up that they couldn’t be collected and put back together. Some burned to ashes, some eaten by the coyotes before they were found, a lot of the bits and pieces buried together in common graves. How would you like to go into court with that sort of evidence?”

Chandler grinned. “So we dig us up another set of left-arm bones and collect the reward. But I bet you already thought of that.”

“Of course,” Plymale said. “You’re not as slow as you’ve been acting. Of course, it wouldn’t work. According to the ad she ran, he had a fracture of that forearm set a few years earlier. X-rays and so forth. Had to be pinned together. You couldn’t get away with it.”

“Oh, well,” Chandler said, thinking of the diamonds again. “Just tell me what you’re after. And what you want me to do. And what’s in it for Bradford Chandler.”

“Were you paying attention when I mentioned that civil law suit? Well, pay attention now. This gets complicated. Old Man Clarke was a widower. No near kin except his son, John. In the suit Joanna’s mother filed way back then, she claimed this Joanna was the baby John Clarke got her pregnant with. That makes Joanna Craig a granddaughter of John Clarke’s daddy. That makes her the ‘direct descendant’ who inherits the family fortune.”

Chandler looked at Plymale, said, “Light begins to dawn. Need I ask who has all that Clarke fortune now?”

“The way the will was written, if there weren’t any of those direct descendants, then the money went to this nonprofit charity foundation we helped him set up. I think I explained that.”

“Ah,” Chandler said. “And you were the executor of his estate?”

Plymale ignored the question. “Joanna Craig’s mother-to-be got herself a lawyer, but the only evidence she had was a bundle of old letters. It was too weak to back up a court claim. We tried to make a settlement with her. She turned that down and that looked like the end of it.”

“She sounds crazy,” Chandler said.

“She was crazy. Old Man Clarke said she was schizophrenic-paranoid. Seemed sane enough when she was taking whatever medicine the shrinks give ’em for that. But crazy, anyway.”

Plymale paused, signaled for another drink. Waited. Chandler looked out across the beach at the surf coming in, at the girl in the string bikini, who was coming back
now, accompanied by another bikini-clad girl. They were looking his way, laughing.

The drink arrived. Plymale took a sip. Poked Chandler’s arm. “Pay attention now,” he said. “Here’s why we give a damn about finding that arm. Those damned scientists now claim they can recover DNA evidence from old bones. Even awful old bones, like in the Egyptian pyramids. You know what that means?”

Chandler nodded, but Plymale told him anyway. It meant that John Clarke’s lost left-arm bones with the old fracture x-rays and maybe even with the diamond case still handcuffed to the wrist could prove that Joanna Craig actually was the man’s daughter.

And, Chandler was thinking, that would mean that old man Plymale would lose control of a huge amount of money. Maybe there would be an outcome even worse than that for Plymale. The court might order Plymale to account for what his “nonprofit charity” had been doing with that mountain of money all the years he had controlled it.

Chandler was staring at the two girls in the bikinis, but his mind was focused on that mountain of wealth.

Within minutes after getting home from his meeting with Pinto, Leaphorn knew this worrying about diamonds wouldn’t just go away. The light on his answering machine was blinking and the second call was from Deputy Sheriff Cowboy Dashee. With a diamond on his mind.

The first one was from Professor Louisa Bourbonette, sounding happy. The old woman she’d gone to see at Bitter Springs had been a treasury of Havasupai legendary stuff. Tomorrow the old lady would take Louisa to see an even more elderly uncle who was full of lore about the Paiute people.

“I’m going to stay down here tonight. Tomorrow I’ll find this fellow and see what I can get on tape. I’ll call you again tomorrow and let you know when to expect me. I think it’s going to link the Havasupai origin story with the
Hopi’s. Wish you were down here with me. You’d be interested in these legends. And don’t forget tomorrow is garbage pickup day on your street.”

Joe hadn’t forgotten. He’d already wheeled the can out to the curb for the Window Rock Trash Co. truck.

The second call was the sort that retired people learn to expect.

“Lieutenant,” Dashee said, “two of your former hired hands have set themselves a getting-married date. It’s going to be two weeks from Monday, at Bernie Manuelito’s mother’s place, south of Shiprock. You’re invited. I get to be best man. In case you haven’t guessed, Bernie’s chosen one is finally, at long last, Jim Chee.”

Then came Cowboy Dashee’s chuckle, followed by a short pause, and then it was time for what retired people know follows friendly introductory statements:

“And, Lieutenant, I’ve got a problem. Like to talk to you about it. Maybe get some advice. This man they’re holding in that Zuni robbery-homicide thing, well, he’s my cousin. That diamond he was trying to pawn, well, he says he’s had that thing for years. He didn’t do that robbery. I’d like to get your help on that.”

Dashee paused. He cleared his throat. Leaphorn sighed.

“Ah,” said Dashee, “Sergeant Chee suggested I ask you about this. Get some advice. He told me something about that old trading post operator way up there at Short Mountain, between Tuba City and Page—McGinnis, I think it is. Anyway, Chee said that in one of your old burglary cases, McGinnis reported having a big diamond stolen from his store. Could you let me know if you have any time to fill me in on that?” Another pause. “Well, thank you, sir.”

Did he have any time? Did he have anything else? Leaphorn dialed the number Dashee left, got Dashee’s answering machine, left a message saying he had time. Plenty of time. Nothing but time. Besides, this diamond thing was different enough to be interesting. He looked in the refrigerator, saw nothing appealing, put on his hat, and went out to his pickup. He’d get a sandwich down at the Navajo Inn and then he’d—He’d what? Watch people playing golf on afternoon television? Play the Free Cell solitary game on the computer? Listen to all those lonely little sounds a house makes when it’s empty? To hell with that. He dialed the Dashee number again.

“Turns out I’ll be going over into your territory today,” he told the answering machine. “I’ll stop at the Hopi Cultural Center for some late lunch. You could meet me there if it’s handy. Otherwise, I’m going on to that old Short Mountain Trading Post. Maybe you could catch me there.”

That done, he wrote a note to Louisa telling her he was taking care of business north of Tuba City and would call her. He climbed into his truck, thinking about Sergeant Chee finally getting wise enough to realize that Bernie loved him. That led him to consider whether he should, once again, suggest to Professor Louisa Bourbonette that they get married. He’d proposed that once, when they decided she would use his Window Rock house as the northern base of her endless research on the mythology of Navajo, Ute, Paiute, Zuni, Hopi, and any other tribes she could persuade to talk into her tape recorder. The first time he’d asked her, the answer had been brief and determined.

“Joe,” she had said, “I tried that once and I didn’t like it.”

The next time he brought it up, she reminded him that he was still in love with Emma, which was still true even though ten years had passed since Emma had left him a lonely widower. Louisa said she would give him another ten years to think about it.

Leaphorn sighed, decided to leave well enough alone again, and made the westward turn onto U.S. 264. He paused at Ganado to top off his gas tank, and spent the next hour trying to decide how to tell Dashee he had not the slightest idea what he could do to help his cousin. No profit in that thought. He shifted to trying to restore his usual Navajo harmony with the world around him—a world in which too many of his old friends seemed to be dying. Even Shorty McGinnis, hard as that was for him to realize.

The Bureau of Land Management pickup he’d last seen Dashee driving wasn’t among the four vehicles in the Hopi Cultural Center parking lot, a disappointment. But the pretty Hopi receptionist in the center’s café recognized him (the first bright spot in the day) and gave him a huge smile. Of course she knew Dashee. He hadn’t been in, but she’d tell him Lieutenant Leaphorn had been there and was driving on to Short Mountain. Leaphorn drank two cups of coffee, ate the Hopi cook’s version of the taco, and headed for Tuba City and the great emptiness of the multicolored cliffs and canyons that lay beyond it.

He paused in Tuba looking for friends he’d made there a lifetime ago as a green rookie cop. It would be good, he thought, to catch them before they cashed in and went off on that Last Great Adventure with the Holy People. He found three, one too busy to do much visiting, one nursing a bad bout with arthritis, and his former Tuba
City district sergeant, who was all too happy to remind him of the mistakes he used to make. That took time.

He headed north out of Tuba City, driving faster than he should, but when he made the left turn onto the wash-board gravel of Navajo Route 6130, the westering sun was low enough to be blinding.

That discomfort was more than offset in the eyes of Leaphorn (with his Navajo conditioning to apply value to beauty, and economic importance to the weather) by the great ranks of towering clouds rising like white castles to the north and west. The usual late-summer “monsoon” was late. Maybe much-needed rain was finally arriving.

He bumped across Big Dry Wash (the sometimes site of roaring runoff floods) and over the ridge into Bikahatsu Wash and onto the Blue Moon Bench.

There the only buildings were the Short Mountain Trading Post, a big slab-sided barn with its pole-fenced pen for sheep connected to a smaller one for other animals, and the store itself, with two gasoline pumps standing beside it. The only vehicle in the packed earth of the parking space was a rusty and windowless old Ford sedan. Its wheels were missing. It rested on blocks with a collection of tumbleweeds trapped beneath it.

Leaphorn parked beside it, turned off his ignition, and sat studying the scene, checking it against his memories, looking with fading hopes for some sign of life. The long wooden bench was still on the porch, but the customers who sat there exchanging gossip and drinking the cold soda pop McGinnis provided them were absent. The livestock pens were empty. If any hay bales were stacked in the barn, he couldn’t see them. And except for a mild breeze, now pushing a tumbleweed
along to add to the old car’s collection, the silence was absolute.

Leaphorn glanced at his watch. Plenty of time had passed for McGinnis to have opened the door, peered out, and waved him in. But the door hadn’t opened. Now he was forced to face what Captain Pinto had told him. John McGinnis had died, was dead, gone forever, Pinto had it right. Leaphorn had simply doubted because he hadn’t wanted to believe. He faced it now, admitted to himself that he had made this long drive hoping to find that Pinto was wrong, or someone to tell him how it had happened. Somebody said it was a heart attack. More likely a stroke. McGinnis would never have gone to a hospital willingly to die among strangers. Leaphorn had expected to find someone here to reassure him about that. Someone with whom he could trade memories. But he’d found only empty, dusty silence.

He got out of the truck, trying to decide what to do, thought of nothing useful, and let habit guide him. He mounted the steps to the porch floor and knocked, and knocked again. No answer. None expected. The sign was still beside the door, telling all who came:
THIS ESTABLISHMENT FOR SALE INQUIRE WITHIN
. Had a new owner bought it? Highly unlikely. Leaphorn knocked again. No response. He walked down the porch to the nearest window, brushed away the dust, put his forehead against the glass, shaded his eyes, and looked in.

Rows of mostly empty shelves, the old man’s desk at the end of a long counter, to Leaphorn’s right, a blinking light. A blinking light? He focused on it through the dirty glass. A television set showing what seemed to be a beer commercial in black and white. In front of the set, the
back of what seemed to be a rocking chair, and the back of the head of someone sitting in the chair. White hair.

Leaphorn sucked in a deep breath, went back to the door, knocked again, and tried the door handle. Unlocked. He pulled the door open and stood staring into the room.

“Mr. McGinnis,” he shouted. “Shorty?” And he hurried in.

It was McGinnis and he was alive, but Leaphorn wasn’t sure of that until he was almost close enough to touch him. Then McGinnis lifted his left hand to adjust the gadget that was holding an audio device over his ears. While doing that he noticed Leaphorn and turned in the rocking chair.

“You born in a barn?” McGinnis asked. “Nobody ever teach you about knocking before you come walking right in?”

Leaphorn found himself not knowing what to say. He watched McGinnis pushing himself awkwardly out of the rocking chair and taking off the earphones he’d been using.

“Back in Window Rock they think you’re dead,” Leaphorn said. “That’s what I was told.”

“Speak up,” McGinnis said. “My hearing ain’t what it was, and I can’t make it out when you’re mumbling. But I’m supposed to be dead, huh?”

“Dead and gone.”

McGinnis had put on his spectacles and was leaning on the back of his chair, peering at Leaphorn.

“Let’s see now,” he said. “You’re that Navajo policeman. Used to come out here years ago and drink my soda pop and get me to tell you where to find people. That right?
You were out here a lot when Old Man Tso got murdered, I remember that. And I believe your granddaddy was that old fella they called Horse Kicker. Am I right? And your mother was a Gorman. One of the Slow Talking Dinee.”

“My grandfather was Hosteen Klee, and nobody ever called him Horse Kicker but you,” Leaphorn said. “And Mr. McGinnis, I want to say I’m glad they’re wrong about you being dead.”

“If you thought I was dead, what the devil brought you way out here? What are you after? You don’t come here not wanting something.”

Before Leaphorn could answer, McGinnis was hobbling back through the store toward the doorway that led to his living quarters.

“I’m going to make you some coffee,” he said. “Unless you broke that habit you had of not drinking whiskey.”

“I’ll take coffee,” said Leaphorn, following McGinnis. But he grimaced as he said it. After all these years he could still remember the awful acidic flavor of the old man’s brew.

McGinnis lit the propane stove on what passed as his kitchen work space, took a chipped cup and a Coca-Cola glass out of the cabinet above. He put his coffeepot over the burner and took a bottle of Jack Daniel’s out of a drawer. He opened that and carefully poured until the glass was filled up to the bottom of the red trademark
C
.

“Have a seat,” he said. “I’ll take a sip or two of this while your coffee gets made and you can tell me what you want me to do for you. Tell me what sort of favor you’re after this time.”

“Well, first I want to know how you’re doing. Looks like you’re still in business. Still grouchy as ever.”

McGinnis snorted, sipped his bourbon, sipped again. He held the glass up close to his eyes, studied it, picked up the bourbon bottle, and dribbled in enough to restore the liquid level up to the bottom of the
C
.

“Business?” he said. “Just barely. Customers all starved out, or they drive over to Page and do their buying there. Once in a while somebody comes in. Usually it’s just to offer to trade me something. That’s sort of what I’m doing now. Just getting rid of what I’ve got left. The giant oil company folks, they already quit bringing the gasoline supply truck out here. Said I didn’t buy as much as they burned driving the delivery truck out.”

They talked awhile about that, about how Old Lady Nez came by with her daughter every once in a while and baked him some bread and did some other cooking for him in exchange for some of the canned goods he still had on his shelves.

“Except for that, I don’t see many people anymore. And now we’ve got that covered, you’re going to ask me what you want to know.”

“All right,” Leaphorn said. “I want to know about that robbery you had.”

“Wasn’t a robbery. Robbery they point a gun at you and take your stuff. Cop like you ought to know the difference. This was a burglary. Broke in after I was sleeping, took a box of canned meat, sugar, stuff like that, and the money I had in my cash box. Mostly food, though. That what you want to know? I can’t tell you much. It didn’t wake me up.”

He gave Leaphorn a slightly sheepish smile and held up the bourbon bottle.

“I’d been watching that damned TV set and sipping a
little more than I should. Didn’t even hear the son of a bitch. Didn’t know he’d been there until I noticed stuff gone from the grocery shelves.”

“Just grocery? They take anything else?”

“Took the blanket I had hanging on a rack in there, and some ketchup, and…” he frowned, straining to remember. “I believe I was missing a box of thirty-thirty ammunition. But mostly food.”

“None of it ever recovered?”

McGinnis laughed. “’Course not,” he said. “If the burglar didn’t eat it, you cops would have done that if you caught him.”

“You didn’t mention a diamond. How about that?”

“Diamond?”

“Diamond worth about ten thousand dollars.”