Coyote Waits (13 page)

“I don’t know then. What do you think?”

“Why not just believe she’s nuts? Likes the old bastard. She’s doing it for humanitarian reasons. You actually went all the way out there and searched the old man’s hogan?”

“I didn’t search. No warrant.”

“You’re getting serious about this, aren’t you?” Kennedy said. “You think there’s something more to it than just Pinto being drunk and killing your man?”

“No,” Leaphorn said. “I’m just curious.” The waffle was wonderful. He chewed a second bite, swallowed, sipped his coffee. “Have you found that car that Chee saw? The old white Jeepster?”

“Didn’t we already cover that? You asked me about the driver.”

“And I noticed how you didn’t exactly answer. You just sort of nodded, and said it had been sloppy work, and then did your little sermon about why waste time on a made case.” Leaphorn was grinning at him. “When the Bureau dumps you I hope you don’t get into playing poker for a profession.”

Kennedy made a wry face. He chewed for a while.

“It took you longer to get to it than I expected,” Kennedy said. “But you never fail to get there. Right to the touchy spot.”

“Touchy?”

“How much do you know about the car?”

“Nothing,” Leaphorn said. “Just what was in the report. Chee saw an old white Jeepster coming from the direction of the crime, turning on a gravel road toward Ship Rock. Chee thought it belonged to an Oriental who teaches at the high school. There was nothing in the report about checking on that car.”

“They found it,” Kennedy said. He eyed Leaphorn. “This is one of those ‘you don’t remember where you heard it’ times.”

“Sure,” Leaphorn said.

“The car belonged to a man named Huan Ji. He teaches math at Ship Rock High School. Just been there four years. No way he’d have anything to do with this crime. He couldn’t have known Pinto or Nez.”

Leaphorn waited for more. Kennedy sipped the last of his coffee, signaled the pretty Zuni girl who was their waitress.

“Ready for a refill,” he said, indicating his cup.

Kennedy had said all he wanted to say about Juan Gee and the car. Why?

“What was this Gee doing way out there in the rain?” Leaphorn asked. “What did he see? What did he tell you?”

Kennedy grimaced and peered across his coffee cup at Leaphorn.

“You remember the Howard case in Santa Fe. The defrocked CIA agent who was working for the State of New Mexico, and the CIA thought he had sold out to the Russians, and we had him staked out watching him until somebody could get around to filing charges. You remember.”

“I remember,” Leaphorn said, grinning. “The part I remember best was the ingenious way he slipped away from you guys. Had his wife drive the car.”

Kennedy grinned, too, even broader than Leaphorn. “Embarrassment squared. Embarrassment to the third power,” he said. The grin turned into a chuckle. “Can you imagine what it was like in the Albuquerque office when the powers found out Howard was safely behind the Iron Curtain? Hell was raised. Fits thrown. Carefully written reports were sent out explaining why it hadn’t occurred to the Bureau that Howard might have his wife driving the car on the escape run.”

“I can imagine the CIA people were rubbing it in.”

“I think you can be sure of it,” Kennedy said.

“Can I be sure that all of this is going to have some bearing on why nobody talked to this Juan Gee?”

“You can,” Kennedy said. “It seems the Bureau was aware that Huan Ji was a friend of the Agency. He was a colonel in the South Vietnamese Army. In intelligence, and he was working for Washington as well as Saigon, We have this vague, scuttlebutt impression that he was one of the very hard people, involved with the sort of stuff we used to hear the horror stories about.”

“Like dropping Vietcong out of helicopters so the one you didn’t drop would be willing to talk?”

“I don’t know,” Kennedy said. “It was just gossip. But anyway he was a client, so to speak, of the CIA and so when everything went to hell over there in 1975 and the Saigon government collapsed, they got him out and helped him get started in the States.”

“A Vietnamese named Juan?” Leaphorn asked.

“It’s H-U-A-N and J-I. Sounds like ‘Gee.’”

“So why didn’t the FBI talk to him?” Leaphorn asked, thinking he already knew the answer.

Kennedy looked slightly defensive. “Why talk to him? The case was all locked up. The arrest was made. We had the smoking gun. No mystery. Nothing to resolve. We didn’t really need another witness.” He stopped.

“And bothering this guy would look bad to the CIA. Would maybe irritate the CIA, which is already sneering at you guys for letting Howard walk away.”

“More or less, I’d say,” Kennedy admitted. “I’m not privy to the upper councils, but I’d say that is a close guess.”

Leaphorn ate more waffle.

“And what the hell’s wrong with that? Why waste everybody’s time? Why piss off the Agency? Why bother Mr. Ji?”

“I just wonder what he was doing out there,” Leaphorn said. “That’s all.”

Kennedy finished his waffle. “I’ve got to go to Farmington,” he said. “A hundred bumpy miles up Route 666. And then a night in a Holiday Inn.”

“You sure you don’t want to go to China?”

“About as much as I want to go to Farmington,” Kennedy said. “And don’t forget to leave a generous tip.”

Leaphorn watched Kennedy leave. He saw his car pull out of the Pancake House parking lot onto old 66, heading for the long drive north to Farmington. He was still wondering what Colonel Ji was doing out in the rain by the rock where the witches gather.

THE HAND MAN’S reputation was as good as they get in modern medicine. He had identified himself as an “Indian Indian,” smiling as he said it and giving Chee a name which Chee instantly forgot. His voice carried a slight British accent with a trace of lilt in it, and he asked his questions in a soft, gentle voice without looking at Chee, never taking his eyes off the ugly, puckered cavity burned across Chee’s left palm. With the Burn Doctor, a woman named Johns, the Hand Man discussed tendon damage, ligament damage, nerve damage, regeneration of tissue, “prognosis for usage,” and “viability of surgical techniques.”

“You clutched the handle of a car door? Is that how I understand it? And the car was burning?” He glanced at Chee’s right hand. “But you are right-handed, is it not true? Why did you use your left hand?”

“I guess because it’s natural to open the driver’s door that way,” Chee said. “If I had another reason I don’t remember it.”

“It’s almost as if your subconscious sensed the forthcoming damage and protected the hand most useful to you.” The Hand Man said it in a clipped, didactic tone, still staring at the angry red mass of scarring on Chee’s palm, never glancing up. “Would you agree?”

“I doubt it,” Chee said. “I’d guess it was also because I was going to pull Delbert out of there with my right hand. But it’s all sort of hazy to tell the truth.”

“Ah, well,” the Hand Man said, no longer interested. And that was that. The Burn Doctor put on a new bandage, using a different wrapping technique. She gave Chee a prescription and instructions, and said she would see him in a week.

“Well, what do you think?” he asked the Burn Doctor.

“Think?”

“About surgery. About how much use I’ll regain of my fingers. Things like that?”

“We’ll have to decide,” the Burn Doctor said. “You’ll be informed.”

“Appreciate it,” Chee said, but the Burn Doctor didn’t notice the irony.

He used the pay telephone again. This time Janet Pete was out. She was in Santa Fe, the receptionist at the Federal Public Defender’s office told him. She was involved with picking a jury for a forthcoming trial. Would she be home this evening? The receptionist had no idea.

Chee called Professor Tagert’s office. Jean Jacobs answered. No, Tagert still hadn’t checked in.

“Can I come over? Do you have time to talk?”

“Sure,” Jacobs said. “About what?”

“Mr. Redd told us about Tagert’s interest in Butch Cassidy. He said Ashie Pinto had helped Tagert find what might be Cassidy’s trail. Out on the Reservation.”

“Okay,” Jacobs said. “I know he’s obsessed with Cassidy but I don’t know much about it.”

Chee walked, feeling disgruntled. Janet Pete knew he would be back in Albuquerque today. He’d written her a note, telling her. So, maybe she couldn’t avoid the Santa Fe duty. On the other hand, maybe she could have. Chee had been around long enough to know how priorities worked when there was a conflict between duty and desire.

He crossed the mall with fallen sycamore leaves blowing around his feet. His hand hurt. His fingers wouldn’t respond properly. He felt discouraged. Blue. Bored. Undecided. He found the door of Dr. Tagert’s office open. Jean Jacobs sat, elbows on desk, chin on hands, staring out the window. She looked blue, bored, and undecided.

“I’m glad to see you,” Jean Jacobs said. “I’ve got a million things to do.” She slapped an angry palm onto a pile of paperwork. “All this goddamn Tagert work, and all my own work and — oh, to hell with it.”

“Yeah,” Chee said. “Sometimes that’s about it.”

“So screw it all,” she said. “I hope you have just walked in here with something that is not only totally time-wasting but mysterious. We’ll figure out how to find the vanished professor of history.” She paused. “Even better, we’ll figure out where they hid the bastard’s body.”

“I guess he’s not back yet then,” Chee said. He decided she wasn’t going to ask him to sit down, even though she obviously expected him to stay. So he moved a stack of folders off a chair and sat.

“I think he’s dead,” Jacobs said. “I’ll bet your Mr. Pinto shot him the same time he shot the officer.”

“I think that’s possible,” Chee said. “But then, what happened to his body?”

Jacobs made a “who knows” gesture. “Did Odell tell you anything interesting? Or useful?”

“I’m not sure how useful. He told us all about Tagert’s disagreement about Butch Cassidy with that other professor. And he told us that Pinto knew an old story about Cassidy, or some other bandido, coming across the Reservation after a robbery in Utah and getting killed by some of us Navajos. Tagert thought that maybe he could find some proof of that. And he’d given up on trying to prove Cassidy died of old age.”

“I heard a little about that yarn,” Jacobs said. “Not much. But I think Tagert was excited about it. That was last summer.” She paused, looked at Chee, a shy look. “What did you think of him?”

“Of Redd? He seemed like a nice guy. He said you were a friend.”

“Ummm,” she said. “A friend.”

Her expression was so sad, so close to matching Chee’s own mood, that he said: “Having troubles?”

And she heard the sympathy in his voice.

“I’m just down today,” she said, and laughed a shaky laugh. “You too, I’ll bet. You didn’t look all that cheerful anyway when you walked in.”

“Yeah,” Chee said. “It hasn’t been one of my better days.”

“Hand hurt?”

“A little.”

“You look down,” Jacobs said. “Troubles?”

“Not really,” Chee said. He shrugged. “I was hoping to meet a friend. She had to go to Santa Fe.” He considered that. “At least she said she had to go to Santa Fe.”

Jacobs was frowning. “She didn’t go?”

“Oh, I guess she went. I meant maybe she didn’t really
have
to go.”

“Oh,” Jacobs said. She made a wry face. “I know
exactly
what you mean.”

“I’m not sure I do,” Chee said.

“I was just guessing. With me, I think it’s more important for me to be with Odell than it is for Odell to be with me.”

“Okay,” Chee said. He laughed. “We’re on the same wavelength.”

“You’ve got a bad hand. You fly all the way in from Farmington or wherever, and your girlfriend thinks going to Santa Fe is more important.”

“Maybe she couldn’t get out of it. And she’s not exactly my girlfriend. We’re more just friends.”

“Uh-huh,” Jacobs said. “Like Odell said.”

Chee wanted to get off this subject.

“You work for Tagert. Part-time anyway. Did you ever notice anything in the paperwork that would give you any idea what he and Pinto were doing out there?”

“I wasn’t that interested, to tell the truth,” she said. “You know, it seems pretty mean to me that they still have you working on this when your hand’s like that. You should be on sick leave.”

“Actually, I am,” Chee said. “Tm doing this on my own time.”

Jacobs lowered her chin, peering at him over her reading glasses, her smooth, round face furrowed by a frown. “Why? Why are you doing it?”

“I’m curious,” Chee said. “I just want to find out how Hosteen Pinto got out there, and what he was doing. Things like that. It doesn’t really need to be done. Not for the trial. Pinto doesn’t even deny he killed Delbert. I’m just doing it because I don’t have anything else to do. And nobody else gives a damn.”

“Somebody else is doing it, too,” Jacobs said.

“What? Who?”

“I got a call a couple of days ago. From a Navajo tribal policeman in Window Rock. He wanted to talk to Tagert. Wanted to know where he could find him.”

“Who was it? You sure it was a Navajo tribal policeman? Not the FBI? Or maybe an investigator from the Federal Public Defender’s office.”

“It was from Window Rock. He said Navajo Tribal Police.”

“What was the name?”

“A funny name. I don’t remember. I remember he was a lieutenant.”

“Leaphorn!”

“That was it,” Jacobs said. “Lieutenant Leaphorn. Do you know him?”

Chee was thinking. He came to the only possible conclusion. “That son-of-a-bitch,” he said.

Jacobs looked startled at the bitterness. She looked away, picked up a pen. Put it down.

“Sorry,” Chee said.

“It sounds like you know him. Is he your boss?”

“I know him. No, he’s not my boss.”

“He just asked if Tagert was here. If I knew where to find him.” She studied Chee. “Is it bad?”

“No,” Chee said. “I don’t know. It’s just—”

He sighed. “You don’t want to hear all this,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “I do.”

“It’s more than curiosity with me,” he began, and told her about his radio conversation with Nez, the fading in and out, the nut who painted basalt, the laughter that led him to fail his friend. He told her of arresting Pinto. He told her about Janet Pete back from Washington taking the Federal Public Defender’s job and representing Pinto.