J Jance - Queen of the Night

Lani knew that people on the reservation who knew the story still sometimes referred to her as Kuadagi Ke’d Al, the Ant-Bit Child. Her adoptive parents had given her the name Lanita Dolores after Kulani O’oks, the Tohono O’odham’s greatest medicine woman, the Woman Who Had Been Kissed by the Bees. Nana Dahd, her godmother, had called her Mualig Siakam, Forever Spinning, because, like Whirlwind, Lani had loved to dance. And after she had used Bat Strength in her fatal encounter with Mitch Johnson in the cave under Ioligam-after she had been saved by the timely intervention of bat wings in the darkness of I’itoi’s cave-Lani often called herself Nanakumal Namkam, Bat Meeter.

But tonight, in the Indian Health Center at Sells, Lani couldn’t be anyone else but Lanita Dolores Walker, M.D.

Putting her dirty cup in the dishwasher, she left her housing compound apartment and headed for the ER.

Vamori, Tohono O’odham Nation, Arizona

Sunday, June 7, 2009, 12:00 a.m.

67º Fahrenheit

Tribal chairman Delia Ortiz’s feet hurt-like crazy. She had been on them all day long. Even though it was Saturday, she had spent most of the day at work in her office at Sells. Now here she was at the dance at Vamori.

Delia’s husband, Leo, loved the dances for good reason. He and his brother, Richard, played in a chicken-scratch band, and the summer dance at Vamori was one of their favorite gigs, but they had grown up on the reservation. Delia had not.

She had spent most of her early years as an “in town” Indian, most notably in Tempe and later on the East Coast. Fat Crack Ortiz, a previous tribal chairman, had wooed her back to the Tohono O’odham reservation from Washington, D.C., by offering her the job of tribal attorney. The fact that Fat Crack later became her father-in-law in addition to being her boss was one of the unintended consequences of her acceptance of that position.

Not long after Fat Crack’s death, Delia herself had been elected tribal chairman. In terms of what was going on at the time, an “in town” Indian was exactly what had been and still was required for the job.

The U.S. government has a long ignoble history of cheating Indians and disregarding treaty arrangements. That was still happening. Tribes, including the Tohono O’odham, were still having to file suit against the BIA in order to get monies that were lawfully due them. Now, however, with casino operations changing reservation economics, there was a new wrinkle in Anglo cheating. The casinos belonged to the tribes, but the mostly Anglo operators were slick and accustomed to winning at every game. They were more than prepared to take the tribes to the cleaners the same way they did ordinary gamblers.

Whenever those kinds of issues needed to be handled, Delia Chavez Cachora Ortiz was up to the task. She brought to the job of tribal chairman qualifications that included a top-flight East Coast education as well as a prestigious cum laude Harvard law degree. Her curriculum vitae was fine when it came to dealing with intractable bureaucrats. There she found she was often able to out-Milgahn the Milgahn.

Not having grown up on the reservation, however, Delia was less prepared for the day-to-day aspects of doing the job at home-for keeping the peace between the various districts on the reservation; for making sure roads got graded and paved in a timely fashion; for settling disputes over someone picking saguaro fruit in someone else’s traditional territory.

She had also learned that everything she needed to know to do her job most likely wouldn’t show up in official visits to her office, or on the tribal meeting agenda, either. For that kind of in-depth knowledge and insight she needed to be out in public-mingling with the people, learning their concerns, and familiarizing herself with their age-old antipathies and alliances. The only way for her to do that was to go where the people went, and they went to the dances.

That meant Delia Ortiz went to the dances, too, not that she liked them much. She didn’t. For one thing there were far too many of them-usually one a week or so. Depending on whether they were summer dances or winter dances, they were either too hot or too cold, and sometimes, like this one at Vamori, the dance was both too hot and too cold in the course of the same night. They were also dusty and loud and they seemed to go on forever, generally lasting from sundown to sunup. But that’s where she had to be, picking up tidbits of gossip while standing in line at the feast house or talking to the old people who, even in the summer, gathered around the fires to keep warm.

Delia’s mandatory attendance at the all-night dance at Vamori was one of the reasons she had given Lani permission to take Gabe to Tucson for the Queen of the Night party and then, afterward, to spend the night at Lani’s place in the hospital housing compound.

At events like this Delia found it difficult to juggle the dual requirements of being both a mother and an elected official. Gabe was a naturally curious child with a propensity for getting into mischief. It was impossible for Delia to keep an eye on him all the time while someone was trying to tell her about what was going on in Ali Chuk Shon, Little Tucson, or Hikiwoni Chekshani, Jagged Cut District.

Delia was standing by one of the cooking fires and talking to a woman whose husband, a diabetic, was having to undergo dialysis three times a week, when Martin Ramon came looking for her. The serious look on the tribal police officer’s face told her something was badly amiss. Delia’s first thought was that something terrible had happened to Gabe. Everyone knew Lani Walker had a lead foot and drove that little Passat of hers far too fast.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“There’s been a shooting,” Officer Ramon told her. “Four people are dead.”

“Where?” she asked. “Here on the reservation?”

Martin nodded. “Over by Komelik,” he said.

Waving good-bye to the woman, Delia excused herself and followed him. “Let me tell Leo,” she told Officer Ramon. “Then, if you don’t mind waiting a few minutes, I’ll go there with you.”

She made her way across the dusty dance floor, dodging between couples dancing their old-fashioned two-step. When she reached the band, she waited until that song ended.

“What’s up?” Leo said, smiling as he asked the question.

“I have to go,” she said. “Something’s wrong at Komelik.”

Without a word, Leo reached for his car keys and offered them to her.

“No,” she said. “You and Richard will need the truck to bring home your instruments. When I finish at Komelik, I’ll have one of the officers take me home.”

She followed Martin Ramon to his patrol car, dreading where she was going and what she was going to see, but incredibly grateful for Leo Ortiz. His automatic reflex of unwavering kindness toward her and toward everyone else was one of the things she treasured about him. And it wasn’t an act, either. He wasn’t one person in public when he wanted to impress people and someone else at home the way her first husband, Philip Cachora, had been.

At one of his gallery openings or when he had been wooing some well-heeled art fancier, Philip had been smooth as glass, Mr. Charm himself. The rough edges had all turned up at home where he had been a lying creep of a drug user and unfaithful to Delia besides. Leo’s life was an open book to her and to everyone else as well.

“Four people?” Delia asked Martin Ramon after she strapped herself into the seat. “Indians?”

“Two are,” he answered. “We’ve got a positive ID on one of them. Thomas Rios from Komelik identified his son Donald. We think the woman is Donald’s girlfriend, Delphina Enos.”

“That new clerk from Nolic?” Delia asked. “The one with the little girl. Is she all right?”