Tony Hillerman - Sacred Clowns

Nakai pushed himself up from the log, stretched, looked down at Chee. “But you want to hear about the woman. That’s why you came here. The incest taboo. You know about it. How it makes you sick, makes you crazy. How it hurts your family. Gets everything out of harmony. So be careful about that woman for a while.” He took another drag on the cigarette.

“I know an old man who lives over near Crystal. That’s where the Hunger People used to be a long time ago before the army moved them to Bosque Redondo. He’s a hataalii . He sings the Mountain Top Way, and the Red Ant Way, and some of the other cures. I will talk to him about this woman. I think he will know something about the Hunger People and our Slow Talking Clan. When I know, then I will tell you.”

“How long will-”

“Young men are impatient when they see the woman they want,” Nakai said. “I know that. I will start tonight.”

“Thank you,” Chee said.

“One more thing. This boy you are looking for. You think he is running away because he is afraid. Does his grandmother still call the lieutenant to ask about him?”

“Ah,” Chee said. Why hadn’t he thought of that? “No. Not for several days.”

“Then the grandmother knows where to find him,” Nakai said. He exhaled smoke and stood looking into the blue cloud hanging in the still air. “And she also knows, I think, that the boy has some reason to be afraid.”

THE VERY FIRST thing Jim Chee intended to do when he reached his office the next morning was call Tribal Councilwoman Bertha Roanhorse. The memos Virginia had left on his blotter asked him to return calls from Lieutenant Toddy at Crownpoint and Captain Largo at Tuba City. They could wait. So could the manila envelope Virginia had dropped in his in-basket. As it turned out, so could Jim Chee. The Navajo Communications Company telephone book listed a Roanhorse number among the nineteen telephones served by the Toadlena exchange, but a stern feminine voice on an answering machine instructed Chee to leave a message. He did. Then he called the Legislative Secretary’s Office. Another blank. None of the Tribal Council committees on which Mrs. Roanhorse served was meeting today. He left another message. Next, he called the Navajo Nation Inn. Yes, Councilwoman Roanhorse was registered. She didn’t answer the room phone. Chee left a third message.

Having exhausted all possibilities he could think of, he returned the call to Captain Largo. Largo was out, but the Tuba City dispatcher had a message for him: “Tell Chee we have drawn a blank on front end repairs here in his hit-run case.”

He called for Lieutenant Toddy at Crownpoint. The lieutenant was in. “I just wanted you to know we didn’t forget you guys in the Navajo Nation’s Capital City,” Toddy said. “We haven’t forgotten, but if your vehicular homicide suspect was somebody around here nobody seems to know about it.”

So much for that. The day was off to a bad start. He’d call Blizzard and tell him that he’d deduced that Councilwoman Roanhorse was hiding Delmar. That should impress Blizzard. But naturally Blizzard wasn’t in. Chee took the manila envelope out of the in-basket. He’d see what Virginia had left for him.

The envelope had for officer chee printed across it in big letters, but nothing else. He tore it open and poured out an audiotape cassette. He turned it over. Nothing on either side to suggest what it held. He dialed Virginia to ask her who had left it. Virginia wasn’t at her desk. The radio on the shelf behind Lieutenant Leaphorn’s desk included a tape player. He’d borrow that.

But the lieutenant, like Virginia, and Blizzard, and Roanhorse, was not in. Chee left the door open behind him, turned on the radio, and slipped in the tape.

It produced the buzzes and clicks characteristic of amateur taping, then ringing sounds, and then a voice saying, “You have reached the office of Councilman Jimmy Chester. I can’t come to the phone now but leave a message after the beep and I’ll call you back.” A brief silence followed, then a beep, and then a second voice:

“Jimmy, this is Ed Zeck. If you’re there pick it up. I need to talk to you. Otherwise, call me down at the motor inn. It’s room 217 and I’ll be there until-”

“I’m here, Ed. What do you need?”

“I need your opinion. I hear some things that worry me.”

“Like what?”

“Like maybe the American Indian Movement is going to mix into this. You hear that?”

“Forget it. AIM doesn’t amount to anything out here. They’re city Indians. Besides, far as Navajos are concerned, they always get on the wrong side of the argument.”

Chee stopped the tape. What the devil was this? Obviously, a telephone conversation. He recognized the scratchy voice of Zeck. Presumably the man responding to Jimmy Chester’s answering machine was, as advertised, Jimmy Chester. But should he be eavesdropping? And who had sent him this? The Nature First guy? What was his name? Applebee.

On Leaphorn’s telephone, he buzzed Virginia’s desk. Now she was there.

“What package?” Virginia asked.

“Actually, a manila envelope.”

“Not me,” Virginia said. “Somebody must have just dropped it on your desk. None of you guys ever lock a door or anything. You don’t even close them, half the time. You think nobody steals from you because you’re policemen. Well, I’ll tell you what. People walk right in here and steal your purse off your chair. Steal your jacket. I had that happen. I’ve been telling the chief for years he should have a rule about keeping the doors locked. When you’re out. Or at least closing them.” Virginia paused for a breath, giving Chee an opportunity.

“It makes everything more efficient,” Chee said, wondering why he was arguing about this. “When you need to talk to someone, you can look in and see if he’s there, or if he’s busy. That’s the way they did it at Crownpoint, too. When I was stationed there. And that’s the way it was at Tuba City.”

“Well, don’t blame me, then,” Virginia said, thereby ending the conversation and leaving Chee staring at Joe Leaphorn’s radio.

Maybe the tape itself would tell him who had brought it. He pushed the play button. The memo he’d written for Leaphorn yesterday was still in the lieutenant’s in-basket. Maybe Leaphorn was out working the Eric Dorsey case, or another crime of some importance. Or maybe he had assigned himself a drive over to Flagstaff. According to the department scuttlebutt, he was supposed to have something going with a woman professor over there. The tape stopped whirring, clicked, and abruptly began speaking in a rumbling male voice with a West Texas accent.

“ – what I hear. But I’ll take your word for it. The other thing. You have any push with the people at the Navajo Times ?”

“Not much. I know the reporter who covers council meetings. He interviewed me last month. That’s about it.”

“I didn’t want to get a big argument going in the press about the dump. Silence is golden sometimes. Especially when you’re dealing with tree huggers. But the paper started running letters bitching about the project. They had one in there from a tribal cop. You think we should react? You know, see if we can put a stop to getting politics mixed in with the Tribal Police. Lot of people would feel strongly about that, Jimmy.”

“No,” Chester said.

“Just hope for the best, you mean? Hope nothing gets stirred up.”

“Yes,” Chester said. “Let’s talk about my money.”

The speakers emitted the tinny sound of Zeck’s laughter. “The check’s in the mail,” he said. “Just like I keep telling you.”

“I’m not laughing,” Chester said. “The bank’s not laughing. I’ve got to pay off that note. Remember, it was me that signed the paper.”