Brian Garfield: Relentless

Now Fred Custis was a Captain in Phoenix and Sam Watchman was a line trooper overdue for promotion and assigned to the dullest hick bailiwick in the state, and there was a connection between those two facts. Fred Custis handled beat assignments and Fred Custis didn’t like Watchman. It had something to do with the fact that Watchman was a fullblood Navajo. Something. Well that was all right too. Watchman didn’t itch to set the world on fire. You just did your job and went through each day at a steady pace. In the end it would take you longer than it would take a white man but if you did the job well enough you’d get the promotions sooner or later and that would be good for Sam Watchman and good for The People too. And in the meantime you’d get married and move into the cute little two-bedroom in Flagstaff and maybe have a kid or two, with your black-olive eyes and Lisa’s blinding smile.

The rusty wreckage of a pickup truck came rattling up the road from the direction of San Miguel and the cowboy driver gave Watchman a cold look on his way past. Watchman wrote up the time and milepost location in his daybook and checked down the stolen-car list but the old Buick wasn’t on it. The car had local plates and he had a feeling he’d seen it, maybe parked up in Fredonia or Marble Canyon. He’d never seen the driver. The man was rawboned, dressed in khaki trousers and a thin windbreaker with sleeves six inches too short for him. He had a sardonic look and he wasn’t arguing, just standing there waiting for Stevens to finish writing up the ticket. Once the man turned his wrist over to look at his watch and Watchman saw a large pale weal of hairless flesh running up the wrist and forearm-the scar of a bad burn. It was instantly noticeable, the kind of “Identifying Marks or Scars” you loved to be able to put out on a fugitive description, but by the same token you wouldn’t forget a feature that striking and Watchman knew he had never come across it in a mug book. He played this game with himself to test his own diligence, studying faces everywhere he went; once in Holbrook he had spotted a wanted man walking across a gas station apron and had arrested the man on the spot. It had earned him a citation but no promotion.

Stevens tore out the ticket and handed it to the man, gave back the driver’s license and registration, and stepped back while the driver got into the Buick and drove away sedately.

When Stevens got into the cruiser he said, “He didn’t even bother with a preamble. Just asked me, ‘How much was I doing?’ I told him ninety-seven and he just shook his head and smiled with half his mouth. Oddball kind of character. He must’ve had something on his mind.”

“Any reason for the big hurry?”

“Said he had to get to the bank in San Miguel before closing time. Hell, he’s got three hours yet.” Stevens was writing up the tag. “Name of Baraclough. The car’s registered to somebody named Sweeney in Fredonia. Baraclough’s brother-in-law, he says.”

“You have any reason to disbelieve him?”

Stevens looked up. The pencil paused. “I guess not.”

“Only?”

“Only-I don’t know. You can lose a lot of money playing hunches.”

“You didn’t push it, then?”

“How could I?”

“Never mind, then. Let’s go on into town and eat.”

They drove into San Miguel past the strip signs: MODERN CABINS-EAT-BAR amp; GRILL-AIR CONDITIONED-SALES AND SERVICE-ALL CARDS

HONORED-REASONABLE RATES. It was a company town and it was the only town of any size on the plateau. The interstate highways had bypassed the region and it was untouched by mushrooming population because few living things could survive in it: in winter the snow drifted deep and in summer the heat could reach 135 degrees, and so the twenty-five thousand square miles were mostly uninhabited except for ranches, filling stations, crossroad bars, campgrounds, and the town here that had grown up around the big open-pit diggings of the San Miguel Copper Company. Most of the surrounding land was Federal-Reservations, National Forests. For active men and women San Miguel was a dead dull town; the mine and smelter employed 12,400 workers and a good many of them spent their weekends in Las Vegas, which was one hundred fifty miles away but the nearest entertainment available to them.

The main street was nine blocks of parking meters and facelifted chain stores, a grain warehouse, used-car lots with flapping pennants, three gas stations, the company-owned San Miguel Bank amp; Trust, the Hollywood Beauty Salon (“What Price Beauty? Free Estimate!”). Rusty pickup trucks and muddy Chryslers were parked on the slant at a few meters and the clinging film of red dust coated everything-the display windows, the beer joints, the hamburger drive-in, the laundromat and the baroque old Paramount movie show with its Moorish marquee.

Watchman parked in front of the Copper King Cafe and plugged a nickel into the meter. “I’ll meet you inside.” He walked on past Woolworth’s to the corner, turned by the bank entrance and went into Zane’s Jewelers next door. Behind the glass counter the old man looked up from his watch-repair bench, jeweler’s glass perched on top of his spectacles.

“So. You’ve come to ransom the ring? I thought it was about time.” The old man got it out of the safe and Watchman bent over the countertop on his elbows, laboriously scrawling out the check in his crabbed hand. When he looked up the old man had placed the pale blue velvety case by his elbow.

The old man picked up the check and examined it as if he suspected its worth; held it up against the light, flapped it back and forth and blew on it, although Watchman’s pen was a ballpoint.

Watchman popped the velvet lid open and the ring winked at him with all its facets.

“You gotch self a beauty there.”

“I guess so,” Watchman said. “It sure cost enough.”

“Hell, I give it to you cheap. Anybody else had to pay a hundred more. Some of us appreciate what you people do for us.” The old man said it accusingly. He filled out a receipt and pushed it across the counter.

Watchman gave it a wooden look. “At least us redskins only scalp enemies. You always skin your friends like this?”

The old man was hurt. “Sam-Sam!” He spread his hands wide in the Old World gesture of helplessness, head cocked to one side. “You can afford it, you’ve got a steady job.”

“Aeah. The pay’s bad, but the work’s terrible.” He snapped the little box shut and put it in his pocket. “Thanks.” And went outside with his hand in the pocket touching the velvet-covered hardness of the ring case. Going around the corner he was picturing Lisa, her lovely eyes, the surprise of delight that would shine in them; he almost crashed into old Jasper Simalie on the bank steps.

“Jesus, Tsosie, you want to look out where you are going.” Old Jasper was grinning.

“ Yah’a’teh, Jasper?”

Jasper Simalie still had a full bush of hair, grayshot and thick but very short; he had a big round Navajo face, deep square brackets creasing it right down past the mouth into the big dependable jaw. He had put on a few pounds since they had measured him for his guard’s uniform and he was beginning to look a little like W. C. Fields as the Bank Dick, with the grey seams straining around his shoulders and paunch. He had a big forty-five in the black Army holster at his waist and the policeman’s cap was tipped far back on his head.

Watchman grinned and poked his jaw toward the cafe. “Buy you a lunch.”

“Naw. I got to es-stick close to the bank.” Jasper indicated the green armored truck parked across the street in the shade. “It’s the fourth Friday.”

Every second and fourth Friday of the month the company-owned bank had a heavy load of cash brought in from Salt Lake to meet the payroll needs of the mine and smelter. On weekends the casinos over in Vegas wouldn’t accept out-of-state payroll checks and San Miguel accommodated its employees by cashing their checks before they set out for the Nevada weekend.