Tony Hillerman - Sacred Clowns

Silence while Clark considered. Then he said, “I doubt it. Probably not.”

“Why not?”

“He wouldn’t have any documentation. There are a few dealers who could do it, I think. People with such reputations for absolute integrity that their word would be accepted.” Clark considered what he had just said for a moment. “Well,” he added, “I’d say their word plus a longish letter explaining the chronology of where the cane had been, whose hands it had passed through, and how it had come into their possession.”

“Who are these honorable dealers?” Leaphorn asked. “Besides you, I mean.”

Silence again. Leaphorn wondered if that had been taken as sarcasm. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” he said. “This is nothing to joke about.”

“Okay,” Clark said. “Maybe Clark Gallery, although we don’t do much of that big-money rare stuff. Let me think who else.” Silence again, and then he named an old but small gallery in Taos, another Santa Fe trader, one in Albuquerque, one in Gallup. “And a few independents, I think. I’d say Elliot Pew down in Tucson, and J. D. Regis in Albuquerque, and Asher Davis in Santa Fe, and maybe old man Fishbien, if he’s still in the business.” Silence again. “It’s a short list. And there’s a lot more honest dealers. But the thing is it takes years to get that word-is-his-bond reputation. And collectors, they’re paranoid. If one of them gets screwed, or thinks he did, he spreads the word in that very small world and right away you couldn’t sell a five-dollar gold piece for three dollars. You’re dead. Nobody’ll touch anything you’re selling.”

“How would I find out if anybody has one of those missing Lincoln Canes?”

“You probably can’t,” Clark said. “But if you want to try I’ll give you a name of a guy in Chicago. A guy named Bundy. He buys some little stuff from me but mostly he’s into Lincoln. For about forty years. He’d be as likely to know as anyone.”

The telephone in Chicago was answered by a man who switched Leaphorn to a woman. She identified herself as Mr. Bundy’s assistant, listened to his identification, took down Desmond Clark’s name, and put Leaphorn on hold.

“This is Bundy,” the next voice said. It was an old voice, with the sound of smoke damage and too much whiskey.

“I’m Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, Navajo Tribal Police,” Leaphorn said. “Mr. Clark thought you might be able to help me track down some information.”

“If I can.”

“You know about the Lincoln Canes given to-”

“Of course,” Bundy said. “What’s your question?”

“It concerns the one Mr. Lincoln sent to Pojoaque Pueblo. Have you ever heard whether it has turned up in any collection, any museum?”

Silence. Then a hoarse, hooting laughter. “Excuse me,” Bundy said. “I’ll be damned.”

“You’ve heard something?” Leaphorn asked.

“I thought it was bullshit,” Bundy said. “Just a rumor I heard last summer.” He laughed again. “We have a little meeting, we Lincoln people. Annual get-together. Have a speaker in from one of the history departments, compare notes. One of my friends there said he’d heard that a fellow, Florida fellow I believe it was, down in Miami, had bought the Pojoaque cane. Said it had turned up somewhere out in the West. I didn’t believe it.”

“Do you know the man’s name?”

“No. I guess I could try to find out, but it’s probably going to take a day or two. What’s this about? Is it important?”

“It’s about a murder,” Leaphorn said, and gave Mr. Bundy his home telephone number.

Then he sat, and rocked back in Father Haines’s swivel chair, thinking about it. How about Asher Davis? he thought. Perhaps Asher Davis had killed Dorsey. He put together a scenario that would explain how he might have been motivated to do it.

But that left two big questions. Could there possibly have been two killers with separate motivations – making the link of the Lincoln Cane irrelevant? If so, who had killed that koshare? And why? But that was more than two questions. And there was another one. How could he find a single shred of evidence to connect Davis to the Dorsey homicide?

THEIR HOUSE had never seemed emptier. Leaphorn had walked into the kitchen intending to put something together for his supper. Perhaps he would boil some water in the coffeepot and open one of those little sacks of dried soup. But as he walked across the linoleum tile, he became aware of the sound of his footsteps. That hadn’t happened to him since the days after he had returned from Emma’s funeral. He had left her mother’s place out beyond Rincon Largo and come home with a sense of personal failure – rare for him and thus all the more disturbing. He had fled on the second day of what Emma’s clan called “the time of blackening” – when everyone wore at least a symbolic smudge of soot to make themselves invisible to the chindi .

It had simply not been possible for him to think of the wife of his lifetime as a malevolent ghost. Emma existed in his mind (and would always exist) as someone laughing, beautiful, gentle, full of joy – someone who loved him even when he least deserved it. And so he had fled, skipping two of the four days of silent, passive family grief which the tradition of Emma’s clan demanded. Its purpose was worthy – lending the thoughts of those who loved her to accompany Emma on her four-day journey into what someone had called “that last great adventure.” But he hungered for isolation to become acquainted with his own sorrow. To get it, he had been willing to suffer the disapproval of Emma’s very traditional people. It was a weakness he had always regretted and often remembered. He remembered it now as he stood beside the sink – reminded by the sound of his own footsteps in an empty kitchen.

He turned on the tap, watched it fill his glass, and took a small sip. The sound of crows overhead came through the window. They gathered each twilight in the cottonwoods around the Navajo Nation administrative offices for their nightly roost – a precise reminder of the earth’s turn away from the sun, of the inevitability of darkness. Where the devil was Jim Chee? He took another sip of the cool water. Supper could wait. He looked at his watch. The plane he would have taken had this Chester problem not developed would be landing in Los Angeles just about now. If all went on schedule Louisa would have a bit more than an hour and a half to get to the international terminal, show the proper people her passport, and whatever other formalities were required. She would call him. He had dialed her number again last night, heard her answering machine’s voice, and hung up. Probably she would call him from the terminal. Perhaps she would be angry at his desertion; perhaps she would be offended, her feelings hurt. He doubted that. She seemed a very sensible person. Logical mind. Practical. She would have understood that circumstances made it impossible for him to go. He stood by the sink, holding the half-empty glass, wishing he could remember exactly what he had said in that message. Had he been specific enough? That brought him to the question that he had been keeping buried somewhere. Why hadn’t she called him? Perhaps she had. He had been away from his office after he’d deposited his message on her machine and he hadn’t been back. If she’d called him at home, there was no machine to record it.

He put down the glass and walked into the living room. He would turn on the television and watch the news. He would not think of Louisa Bourebonette. Instead, he found himself watching a car dealership commercial and thinking of Chee. Had he and Emma had a son he might have been like Chee, a complicated mixture of intelligence, romanticism, logic, and idealism. If Emma had been his influence he would have been, like Chee, at least trying to maintain his traditionalism. Had he taken after his father, he would have been – like Chee seemed to be – incompetent to understand women. Clearly the boy had his troubles there. Clearly he was enamored of that young lawyer. Miss Pete. Judging from signs of unhappiness Chee had been showing, that must not be going well. Abruptly, it occurred to Leaphorn that this might explain Chee’s disappearance. Perhaps the rift had been healed and the lawyer and the cop were off somewhere enjoying each other’s company.