Sacred Clowns (19 page)

“I think this is what we’re looking for,” he told Toddy, displaying the sheet. He sat on Dorsey’s neat bed to study it.

The drawings were the sort Leaphorn had himself once made in woodworking shop long ago when he was a student in a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school. Little lines marked margins, and numbers between arrows marked dimensions in inches. One sketch was of the cane itself. The other was of the head, with the details of the legend carefully drawn in:
A. LINCOLN, PRES. U.S.A.
, 1863, and
TANO
. Across the page was written “Misc. File.” Notes, in tidy handwriting that Leaphorn presumed was Dorsey’s, ran down the right margin of the paper:

ebony—get dark as possible

tip—cast iron. neat fit. try farrier at Farmington. grind.

head—buff. avoid dust.

$450, $250 advance.

delivery on/before Nov. 14.

November fourteenth. The day Eric Dorsey died.

Leaphorn handed the paper to Toddy. “It looks like Dorsey got cheated out of his last two hundred,” he said.

There was nothing else related to the cane in either of the baskets. The contents of the file cabinet dealt mostly with classwork, warranties on power tools, operating instructions, and orders for supplies. Leaphorn checked through those, sorting out invoices from Albuquerque Specialty Woods. An invoice on a September 13 shipment listed “One ebony, 2 x 2 x 36.”

He showed it to Toddy. “Here’s when he bought the wood,” Leaphorn said.

Toddy grunted.

There were other Specialty Woods invoices in the file. Leaphorn checked through them, backward in time, in his advertised mode of just looking without knowing for what.

“Be damned,” he said. “Look at this.”

“Well, now,” Toddy said. “It looks like Mr. Dorsey was in the cane-making business.”

The form principally covered an order of walnut, mahogany, and clear white pine. But the last item read, “No. 1 ebony blank 2 x 2 x 36.”

Leaphorn looked at the date. The shipment had been made more than two years ago.

No more ebony purchases showed up in the other invoices. Leaphorn found the “Misc. File” folder in the back of the bottom drawer. In it was a thick packet of letters secured with a rubber band, copies of correspondence about an overdue VISA card payment, notes that seemed to deal with Christmas presents, and assorted sheets of paper bearing notes. One bore a neat pencil sketch of a Lincoln Cane.

Leaphorn extracted it. On this sheet the instructions had been typed. They gave dimensions, details of the finish of the silver head, of how the cast-iron tip should be ground. The dimensions of the letters to form the legend were specified in millimeters. And now the legend read,
A. LINCOLN PRES. U.S.A. 1863 POJOAQUE
.

Pojoaque. Leaphorn had been there long ago. A tiny place beside the highway north of Santa Fe. Leaphorn flipped through the bundle of envelopes. Thirty-seven letters, the first of them with the same return address in Fort Worth, Texas, the rest from the Veterans Administration hospital in Amarillo, and all with the name “George” above the address. They had come about a week apart at first and then less frequently. Leaphorn returned them to their hiding place in the bottom drawer.

He handed Toddy the Pojoaque Lincoln Cane sheet.

“I’d say he made two of them,” Toddy said. “And the second one he finished right on the deadline.”

“Yeah,” Leaphorn said. “That was the date, wasn’t it?”

“It was. So now we know Dorsey not only got killed. He got screwed.”

“Out of his final payment,” Leaphorn said. “That’s right. He just had twenty-something dollars in his billfold. But maybe he got paid in advance.”

Toddy shrugged. “No difference, now,” he said. “You finished here?”

“I think so,” Leaphorn said. “Has Streib released this stuff so his kinfolks can claim it? Is somebody coming after it?”

Toddy was looking at the family photograph. “I guess this one is him,” he said. “The oldest boy.” He moved from the photograph to the framed motto. “Did you read this?”

“No,” Leaphorn said.

“I think it’s out of the Bible. Maybe one of the psalms.” Toddy read it, in the voice one reserves for reciting poetry:

One thing I will ask of the Lord,

This will I seek after:

That I may dwell in the House of the Lord

All the days of my life.

“I think it’s one of the Psalms of Solomon, or maybe it was David.”

“It’s a lot like some of the verses from our Blessing Way,” Leaphorn said. “You notice that?”

Toddy’s expression said he hadn’t. But now he did. “I see what you mean,” he said. “The House Made of Morning Mist, the House Made of Dawn.” He turned and looked at the motto. “May I always walk with beauty before me.”

“Is Dorsey’s family coming to get his stuff?” Leaphorn repeated.

“No,” Toddy said. “Nobody seems to want it. Let’s get out of here.”

FATHER HAINES had his coat on and his hat in his hand when Leaphorn tapped at his office door.

“I just wanted to know if I could borrow a telephone,” Leaphorn said. He displayed his AT&T calling card. “I need to make some long-distance calls.”

“How about mine?” Haines said. He pointed to his desk and glanced at his watch. “I have a meeting in Gallup, so just make yourself comfortable.”

Comfortable it was. From its looks, Haines’s chair had been made about fifty years ago and heavily used. Its seat was well-padded leather. It swiveled, and tilted, and felt generally substantial. And the Haines telephone was one of those heavy black rotary-dial jobs made back when Ma Bell ruled.

Leaphorn used it to dial information and get the number of the Clark Gallery in Santa Fe. Desmond Clark was in, and wanted to know how Leaphorn was doing, and when they were going to go deer hunting again, and why didn’t Leaphorn retire, and how his health was holding up. Past all that old-friend exchange, they came to business.

“You know all about the Lincoln Canes, I guess,” Leaphorn said. “What would one be worth to a collector, and who would buy one? Fill me in on all that.”

“That’s easy,” Clark said. “Nobody would buy one. Everybody would know it was stolen property. You couldn’t display it. Or brag about it.”

“How about the Zuni War Gods?” Leaphorn said. “Somebody bought them, knowing they had to have been stolen. And the Hopis have had lots of stuff disappear and then it turns up in collections. And—”

“Okay,” Clark said. “I see what you mean. The underground market. Let me think about it a minute.”

“Think,” Leaphorn said, and waited.

“I believe ol’ Honest Abe sent nineteen of those out during the Civil War. Eighteen or nineteen. So they’re extremely rare, and they’re extremely unusual, and they look great. Ebony and silver, you know. And everybody’s favorite national hero had them made with his name on them. So if you were a Lincoln man, or even a Civil War buff, one would be worth a ton. I’d guess bidding would start at a hundred thousand. Maybe better. But a stolen one—I don’t know. I guess dealers who know the Lincoln trade could find a buyer. My field is Native American collectibles. I wouldn’t know.”

“But you think as high as a hundred thousand?”

“If it was a legitimate sale. Certified authenticity. All that. Say, for example, Taos Pueblo decided to sell its cane. All legal and everything. I’d say that would be low. You’d have the Indian buffs and the Lincoln buffs and the Civil War crazies all competing for it. But now you’ve got to tell me why you’re asking.”

“In a minute,” Leaphorn said. “Let’s say it wasn’t a public sale. Let’s say a dealer just approached a collector and said he had acquired one and wanted an offer.”

“The collector calls the cops.”

“Let’s say he was an unscrupulous collector.”

“He still calls the cops,” Clark said. “Even quicker. He figures it’s a sting. He’s being set up.”

“Okay,” Leaphorn said. “How about another possibility. Haven’t some of those canes disappeared? Down through the generations. Got lost or something? What if—”

“Aah,” Clark said. “That opens a new can of worms. Yes. I’m no authority on these Lincoln Canes. You could find out in the library. But I think some of the pueblos don’t have them any longer. Some of them went through pretty troubled times, you know. Like little Pojoaque, and Tesuque once, and Picuris.”

“So let’s say somebody who really knows about such things gets his hands on one of those lost canes. Could he sell it?”

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.

The doorbell rang.

That had been an unusual sound in this house for a long time. Who could that be? Maybe Dilly Streib had uncovered something he wanted to tell him. Maybe Virginia had suggested that Streib drop by. Or maybe, with the same circumstances, it was Jim Chee. Where had Chee been? He’d have to make sure this absence without explanation business didn’t happen again.

Janet Pete was standing at his door, her little Ford Escort parked on the street. Miss Pete looked tired, slightly disheveled, glum, and nervous.

“Well,” Leaphorn said. “Good evening. Come on in.”

She followed him into the living room. “I apologize for coming like this,” she said. “Intruding into your privacy, I mean. But I couldn’t get you at your office and Virginia said you might be here, and you wouldn’t mind.”

“It’s perfectly all right,” Leaphorn said.
This is another coincidence,
he thought,
happening to me, who does not believe in them. I am worrying about Chee and this young woman, and she appears to talk about him. It will be something personal. So what can I tell her?

He smiled at her. “Could I get you something to drink? Something legal, of course. Possession of which is not prohibited in the Navajo Nation. I think I have some sort of soda pop in the refrigerator. Or I could put on some coffee if you’d like it. And meanwhile, have a seat.”

“Oh, no,” Miss Pete said. “Nothing for me.” But she sat in the chair he indicated. “I can only stay a moment. Just long enough to represent a client.”

“Ah,” Leaphorn said, and sat across from her, thinking this was his week for guessing wrong. “Which client?”

“I represent Eugene Ahkeah,” she said.

“So I heard.”

“We had a long talk today,” Janet said. “Over at Crownpoint.” She hesitated.

She will tell me something, or ask me a favor. Or perhaps both,
Leaphorn thought.
But she’s making this visit on an impulse. Worst possible time, right at supper. She hasn’t thought it through. She may change her mind.

“Does Mr. Ahkeah have something to tell me?” Leaphorn said.

“No,” she said. “Well, not exactly. I guess I do.” She laughed, shook her head. “Your assistant, Officer Chee, suggested that I tell you my client is innocent. After today, I’m sure he is. He didn’t kill Eric Dorsey. He didn’t steal all those items you found in the box under his house.”

“Chee said you should tell me Ahkeah was innocent? When? Did you see him today?”

“He was just joking,” she said, surprised at the intensity of his tone. “It was last week.”

“Not something he knew, then,” Leaphorn said, making a gesture of dismissal. “We’ve been working on separate things and I haven’t seen him for a few days. I thought perhaps you were bringing me a dispatch from wherever Chee is spending his time these days.”

Miss Pete looked faintly alarmed. “I think he has some days off,” she said.

“Correct,” Leaphorn said. “And he’s taking them.”

Miss Pete had collected herself. “This may sound unprofessional—my coming to you instead of going through the usual legal channels. But I know going to the U.S. attorney wouldn’t do any good, and I’m not sure what you will say and so the worst I can do is waste some of our time.” She paused, picked up the handbag she’d placed on the chair beside her, and put it in her lap.

Leaphorn waited.

“I realize you have a lot of circumstantial evidence,” Janet said. “The stolen materials under his house, principally, although no search warrant was issued as far as I can find out so far and that probably won’t be admitted in court. I guess you can probably place him at the scene of the homicide at about the right time, and perhaps you have some other evidence. But given time I think I’ll be able to show he was set up, that the crime was actually done by the man who made that anonymous telephone call about the box under Ahkeah’s house.”

She paused, awaited a Leaphorn reaction to all this, received a smile and a nod instead of the argument she’d expected, and hurried on.

“There’s simply no motive for Ahkeah to have done it. The prosecution will argue that the motive was theft. He needed to get money to buy whiskey. But he didn’t sell the stuff. He didn’t buy whiskey.”

She paused, waiting again for the counterargument.

Leaphorn nodded.

Miss Pete flushed slightly. She picked up the purse and put it on the chair beside her and cleared her throat.

“Totally aside from his innocence, Mr. Ahkeah is certainly no risk to become a fugitive. He has no connections off the reservation. He doesn’t have any money, no way to run and no place to hide. He doesn’t even speak very much English. There’s really no reason to hold him in a cell under a bond he can’t possibly raise.”

Miss Pete stopped, looked at him, waited for a response.

“What would you like me to do?”

“I came to ask you if you would ask Mr. Streib to recommend to the court that Mr. Ahkeah be released on his own recognizance.”

Leaphorn thought a moment. “All right,” he said.

Miss Pete looked startled. She picked up the purse and put it down again. “All right? You mean you’ll do it?”

“I’ll call him this evening.” Leaphorn looked at his watch. “I’ll give him time to eat his supper. I think he’ll go along with it. Mr. Streib is usually pretty reasonable.”

He was watching Miss Pete, who was struggling to replace the amazement on her face with something less revealing. She won the battle, and then produced a nervous laugh.

“You know,” she said, “Jim said: ‘Tell the lieutenant Ahkeah is innocent and he’ll turn him loose.’ I thought he was just kidding.”

“He was,” Leaphorn said, smiling at her. “It just happens that I agree with you. Even if Ahkeah did it, he isn’t going to run anywhere that we can’t find him. And you may be right about him being not guilty.”

Miss Pete had recomposed herself. “I wish the police would concentrate on finding who it was who set Ahkeah up. I think that’s what happened. Whoever killed Mr. Dorsey saw Ahkeah at the Bonaventure Mission. They noticed he was drunk and decided he’d be perfect as the fall guy.”

“Possibly,” Leaphorn said. He was thinking,
I like this young woman. I like the way she works for her client, and maybe I will be needing a lawyer myself if they decide to charge me with concealing evidence of an illegal wiretap.
And he was thinking that he could see now why she appealed to his assistant.

“Do you know where I can find Jim Chee?”

Miss Pete looked surprised. “No.”

“Or how to get a message to him?”

“No.”

Leaphorn allowed himself to look disappointed, which was easy, because he was.

“I thought you might,” he said. “I have gotten the impression that Jim counts his time wasted when you are not nearby.”

It seemed to Leaphorn that Miss Pete looked sad to hear this.

“We’ve been friends a long time,” she said. “He tells me his troubles. I tell him mine.” She dismissed all this with a shrug, but her expression canceled that.

“It’s good to have someone you can talk to like that,” Leaphorn said. “I apologize. I must be sounding like an overaged cupid. I guess I read Jim all wrong. We have an old hit-and-run case—totally hopeless—but the chief wants it solved and there’s probably a promotion there for whoever can nail the guy. I think Chee’s working on it hard because he thinks with sergeant stripes he would look to you more like a worthy marriage prospect.”

Miss Pete’s expression, if Leaphorn read it right, went from irritation, to surprise, to sorrow.

She exhaled, picked up the purse again, and put it down.

“I don’t normally behave like this,” Leaphorn said. “Normally I’m pretty good at minding my own business. ‘Herd your own sheep,’ as my mother used to teach us. I’m Jim’s boss and I like him, and I worry about him sometimes.”

“I worry about him too,” she said. “But I think you have sort of misinterpreted things.” She produced a weak smile. “So did I. I was thinking in terms of Romeo and Juliet. The wrong families and all that.”

It took Leaphorn a moment to understand. “Clans,” he said, and made a wry face.

“Well, actually I think the clan business is all very ambiguous. Only my father was a Navajo. And it’s hazy on his side, too. But Jim, you know, I think maybe he’s not the marrying kind. So, even a hazy, ambiguous clan taboo can be useful.”

“Ummm,” Leaphorn said. What in the world was he doing, he thought, behaving just as Emma would behave, trying to be a matchmaker? This was absolutely none of his business. But he had found that he liked Janet Pete. He hadn’t expected to like her. And when you looked past his various flaws, you had to like Jim Chee, too. So, to hell with it, he would continue interfering. Emma wouldn’t believe he was doing this, but she would certainly approve.

“There’s something hard for normal people to understand about Jim Chee,” he said. “He’s an odd sort of idealist. He wants to become a practicing
hataalii.
He wants to be a bona fide traditionalist. To be a singer of the curing ceremonials. Not just to be a shaman, but to be a really effective one.” Leaphorn paused, looking for some general statement to sum this up, and his own attitude toward it. “It makes any sort of taboo more powerful than it would be to me—and probably to you. Officer Chee wants to save his people from the future.”