Talking God Part 7

"I've come at a bad time," Bad Hands said. "I didn't notice Miss Pete's car outside. I didn't realize you were having a conference."

Jim Chee stepped out of the office. Bad Hands recognized him instantly, and with a sort of controlled shock that seemed to Chee to include not just surprise but a kind of dismay.

"And this is Jim Chee," Highhawk said. "You gentlemen have met before. Remember? On the reservation. Mr. Chee is the officer who arrested me. Jim Chee, this is Rudolfo Gomez, an old friend."

"Ah, yes," Bad Hands said. "Of course. This is an unexpected pleasure."

"And Mr. Gomez is the man who put up my bail," Highhawk said to Chee. "An old friend."

Bad Hands was wearing his gloves. He made no offer to shake hands. Neither did Chee. It was not, after all, a Navajo custom.

"Sit down," Highhawk said. "We were talking about my preliminary hearing."

"I've come at a bad time," Bad Hands said. "I'll call you tomorrow."

"No. No," Janet Pete said. "We're finished. We were just leaving." She gave Chee the look.

"Right," Chee said. "We have to go."

A cold wind out of the northwest had blown away the drizzle. They walked down the steps from Highhawk's porch and pa.s.sed a blue Datsun parked at the sidewalk. It wasn't the car Bad Hands had been driving at the Agnes Tsosie place, but that had been three thousand miles away. That one was probably rented. "What'd you think?" Janet Pete asked.

"I don't know," Chee said. "He's an interesting man."

"Gomez or Highhawk?"

"Both of them," Chee said. "I wonder what happened to Gomez's hands. I wonder why Highhawk calls him an old friend. But I meant Highhawk. He's interesting."

"Yeah," Janet said. "And suicidal. He's flat determined to go to jail." They walked a little. "Stupid son of a b.i.t.c.h," she added. "I could get him off with some community service time and a suspended sentence."

"You know anything about this Gomez guy?" Chee asked.

"Just what I told you and what Highhawk said. Old friends. Gomez posted his bail."

"They're not old friends," Chee said. "I told you that. I saw them meet at that Yeibichai where I arrested him. Highhawk had never seen the guy before."

"You sure of that? How do you know?"

"I know," Chee said.

Janet put her hand on his arm, slowed. "There he is," she said in a tiny voice. "That car. That's the man who's been following me."

The car was parked across the street from them. An aging Chevy two-door, its medium color hard to distinguish in the shadows.

"You sure?" Chee said.

"See the radio antenna? Bent like that? And the dent in the back fender? It's the same car." Janet was whispering. "I really looked at it. I memorized it."

What to do? His inclination was to ignore this situation, to simply walk past the car and see what happened. Nothing would happen, except Janet would think he was a nerd. He felt uneasy. On the reservation, he would have simply trotted across the street and confronted the driver. But confront him with what? Here Chee felt inept and incompetent. This entire business seemed like something one saw on television. It was urban. It seemed dangerous but it was probably just silly. What the devil would the Washington Police Department recommend in such a circ.u.mstance?

They were still walking very slowly. "What should we do?" Janet asked.

"Stay here," Chee said. "I'll go see about it."

He walked diagonally across the street, watching the dim light reflecting from the driver's-side window. What would he do if the window started down? If he saw a gun barrel? But the window didn't move.

Beside the car now, Chee could see a man behind the steering wheel, looking at him.

Chee tapped on the gla.s.s. Wondering why he was doing this. Wondering what he would say.

Nothing happened. Chee waited. The man behind the wheel appeared to be motionless.

Chee tapped on the window again, rapping the gla.s.s with the knuckles of his right hand.

The window came down, jerkily, squeaking.

"Yeah?" the man said. He was looking up at Chee. A small face, freckled. The man had short hair. It seemed to be red. "Whaddaya want?"

Chee wanted very badly to get a better look at the man. He seemed to be small. Unusually small. Chee could see no sign that he was armed, but that would be hard to tell in the darkness of the front seat.

"The lady I'm with, she thinks you've been following her," Chee said. "Any reason for her to think that?"

"Following her?" The man leaned forward toward the window, looking past Chee at Janet Pete waiting across the street. "What for?"

"I'm asking if you've been following her," Chee said.

"h.e.l.l, no," the man said. "What is this anyway? Who the h.e.l.l are you?"

"I'm a cop," Chee said, thinking as he said it that it was the first smart thing he'd said in this conversation. And it was more or less true. A good thing to have said as long as this guy didn't ask for identification.

The man looked up at him. "You sure as h.e.l.l don't look like a cop to me," he said. "You look like an Indian. Let's see some identification."

"Let's see your identification," Chee said.

"Ah, screw this," the man said, disappearing from the window. The gla.s.s squeaked as he rolled it up. The engine started. The headlights came on. The car rolled slowly away from the curb and down the street. It made a careful right turn and disappeared. Absolutely no hurry.

Chee watched it go. Through the back window he noticed that only the top of the driver's head protruded above the back of the seat. A very small driver.

12.

Since boyhood Fleck had been one of those persons who like to worry about one thing at a time. This morning he wanted to worry only about Mama. What the devil was he going to do about her? He was up against the Fat Man's deadline. Get her out of that nursing home. "Get her out now!" the Fat Man had shouted it at him. "Not one more day!" The only place he'd found to put her wanted first month and last month in advance. With all those so-called incidental expenses they always stuck you with for the private room, that added up to more than six thousand dollars. Fleck had most of it. Plus he had ten thousand coming, and overdue. But that didn't help him right now. He'd scared the Fat Man enough to hold him a day or two. But he couldn't count on much more than that. The son of a b.i.t.c.h was the kind who just might call the cops in on him. That wasn't something Fleck wanted to deal with. Not with Mama involved. He had to get the ten thousand.

There was another problem. He had to give some thought to that cowboy who'd walked over to his car last night and tapped at the window. What the h.e.l.l did that mean? The guy looked like an Indian, and he was with that Indian woman who'd been visiting Highhawk. But what did it mean to Fleck? Fleck smelled cop. He sensed danger. There was more going down here than he knew about. That worried him. He needed to know more, and he intended to.

Fleck pulled into the Dunkin' Donuts parking area. He was a little early but he noticed that the Ford sedan with the telephone company symbol was already parked. His man was on a stool, the only customer in the place, eating something with a fork. Fleck took the stool next to him.

"You got it?" Fleck asked.

"Sure. You got fifty?"

Fleck handed the man two twenties and a ten and received a folded sheet of paper. He felt foolish as he did it. If he was smart, he could probably have found a way to get this information free without paying this creep in the telephone company. Maybe it was even in the library. He unfolded the paper. It was a section torn from a Washington Convention and Visitors Bureau map of the District of Columbia.

"I circled the area where they use the 266 prefix," the man said. "And the little x x marks are where the public phone booths are." marks are where the public phone booths are."

Only a few x x's, Fleck noticed. Less than twenty. He commented on it.

"It's mostly a residential district," the man explained, "and part of the emba.s.sy row. Not much business for pay phones out there. You want a doughnut?"

"No time," Fleck said, getting up.

"Haven't heard much from you lately," the man said. "You going out of business?"

"I'm in a little different line of work right now," Fleck said, walking toward the door. He stopped. "Would you happen to know of any good nursing homes? Where they take good care of old people?"

"Don't know nothing about 'em," the man said.

Fleck hurried, even though he had until two P.M. P.M. He started on Sixteenth Street, because that's where the countries without enough money to build on Ma.s.sachusetts Avenue mostly located their emba.s.sies. None of the numbers matched there, although he found two booths with 266 numbers The Client had used earlier. He moved to Seventeenth Street and then Eighteenth. It was there he found the number he was scheduled to call at two He started on Sixteenth Street, because that's where the countries without enough money to build on Ma.s.sachusetts Avenue mostly located their emba.s.sies. None of the numbers matched there, although he found two booths with 266 numbers The Client had used earlier. He moved to Seventeenth Street and then Eighteenth. It was there he found the number he was scheduled to call at two P.M. P.M. Fleck backed out of the booth and looked up and down the street. No other pay booths in sight. He'd have to rent the car equipped with a mobile telephone. He'd reserved one at Hertz last night, just in case it worked out this way. Fleck backed out of the booth and looked up and down the street. No other pay booths in sight. He'd have to rent the car equipped with a mobile telephone. He'd reserved one at Hertz last night, just in case it worked out this way.

Fleck spent the next two hours driving out to Silver Spring and checking on a rest home he'd heard about out there. It was a little cheaper but the linoleum on the floors was cracked and streaked with grime and the windows hadn't been washed and the woman who ran the place had a mean-looking mouth. He picked up the rent-a-car a little after one, a black Lincoln town car which was too big and too showy for Fleck's taste but which would look natural enough in Washington. He made sure the telephone worked, put his Polaroid camera on the front seat beside him, and drove back to Eighteenth Street. He parked across the street and a little down the block from the phone booth, called it, left his receiver open, and walked down the sidewalk far enough to hear the ringing in the booth. Then he sat behind the wheel, slumped down to be less visible. He waited. While he waited, he thought.

First he went over his plan for this telephone call. Then he thought about the cowboy walking across the street and rapping at his window. If he was an Indian-and he looked like one-it might tie back to the killing. He'd left the train at the little town in New Mexico. Gallup, it was. Indians everywhere you looked. Probably they even had Indian cops and maybe one of them was looking into it. If that was true it meant they had tracked him back to Washington and somehow or other tied something together with that silly-looking b.a.s.t.a.r.d who wore his hair in a bun. That meant they must know a h.e.l.l of a lot more about what Fleck was involved with than Fleck knew himself.

That thought made him uneasy. He shifted in the seat and looked out the window at the weather, getting his mind off what would happen to him if the police ever had him in custody, with his fingerprints matched and making the circuit. If it ever got that far, he could kiss his a.s.s good-bye. He could never, ever let that happen. What would Mama do if it did?

If he could only find someplace where her always getting even didn't get Mama into trouble. She was too old for that now. She couldn't get away with it like when she was healthy. Like that time when they were living down there near Tampa when Mama was young and the landlord got the sheriff on to them to make them move out. He remembered Mama down on her stomach behind the stove loosening up something or other on the gas pipe with Delmar standing there handing her the tools. "You can't let the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds get up on you," she was saying. "You hear that, Delmar? If you don't even it up, they grind you down even more. They spit on you ever' living time if you don't teach them you won't let them do it."

And they had almost spit on them that time, if Mama hadn't been so smart. Some of the neighbors had seen Delmar down there that night just before the explosion and the big fire. And they told on him, and the police came there to the Salvation Army shelter where Mama was keeping them and they took Delmar off with them. And then he and Mama had gone down to the sheriffs office and he told them it was him, not Delmar, the neighbors had seen. And it had worked out just like Mama had said it would. They had to go easy on him because he was only thirteen and it was a first offense on top of that, and they'd have to handle him in juvenile court. But with Delmar being older, and with shoplifting and car theft and a.s.sault already on his books, they would try him as an adult. Fleck had only got sixty days in the D Home and a year's probation out of that one. Mama had always been good at handling things. But now she was just too old and her mind was gone.

Fleck's reverie was ended by a woman hurrying around the corner toward him. She wore a raincoat, something shiny and waterproof over her head, and was carrying a plastic sack. She walked past Fleck's Lincoln without a glance. While he watched her in the rearview mirror, another figure appeared at the corner ahead of him. A man in a dark blue raincoat and a dark gray hat. He carried an umbrella and as he hesitated at the curb, looking for traffic, he opened it.

It had started to rain, streaking the car windows, pattering against the windshield. Fleck glanced at his watch. Seventeen minutes until two. If this was his man, the man was early. He crossed the street, slanting the umbrella against the rain, and hurried down the sidewalk toward the telephone booth. He walked past it.

Fleck slumped down in the seat, too low to see or be seen. He waited. Then he pushed himself up. He used the electric control to adjust the side mirror, found the man just as he turned the corner behind the car. Probably someone with nothing to do with this business, Fleck thought. He relaxed a little. He glanced at his watch again. Waited.

What Mama had always taught Delmar and him had saved him there in the Joliet State Penitentiary, that was certain enough. It had been hard to do it. Things are always hard when you're a little man, and you're young. He thought they'd kill him if he tried it. But it had saved him. He couldn't have lived through those years if he'd let them spit on him. He'd have died. Or worse than that, been like the little pet animals they turned their baby dolls into. Three of them had been after him. Ca.s.sidy, Neal, and Dalkin, those were their names. Ca.s.sidy had been the biggest, and the one Fleck had been the most afraid of, and the one he'd decided he had to kill first. But looking back on it, knowing what he knew now, Dalkin was really the dangerous one. Because Dalkin was smart. Ca.s.sidy had made the move on him first, and when he got away from that, the three of him had got him into a corner in the laundry. He'd never forget that. Never tried to, in fact, because that had been the black, grim, hard-rock bottom of his life and he needed to think of it whenever things were tough, like today. They'd held him down and raped him, Ca.s.sidy first. And when they were all finished with him, he had just laid there a moment, not even feeling the pain. He remembered vividly exactly what he had thought. He'd thought: Do I want to stay alive now? And he absolutely didn't want to. But he remembered what Mama had taught him. And he thought, I'll get even first. I'll get that done before I die. And he'd got up and told them all three they were dead men. Three or four other cons had been in the laundry by then. He hadn't noticed them. He wouldn't have noticed anyone then, but they got the word out in the yard. Ca.s.sidy had beaten him after that, and Dalkin had beaten him, too. But getting even had kept him alive.

It was raining harder now. Fleck turned on the ignition and started the windshield wipers. As he did, the man with the umbrella turned the corner again. He'd circled the block and was walking again down the opposite sidewalk toward the telephone booth. Fleck turned off the wipers and glanced at his watch. Five minutes until two. The Client was punctual. He watched him enter the booth, close the umbrella and the door. Ca.s.sidy had been punctual, too. Fleck had gotten the note to him. Printed on toilet paper. "I'll have something just for you five minutes into the work break. Behind the laundry."

He gambled that Ca.s.sidy would think only of s.e.x. He gambled that a macho two-hundred-and-forty-pounder who could bench press almost four hundred pounds wouldn't be nervous about a hundred-and-twenty-pounder, the kid the yard called Little Red Shrimp. Sure enough, Ca.s.sidy wasn't nervous. He came around the corner, grinning. He had walked out of the sunlight into the shadow, squinting, reaching out for Fleck when he saw Fleck smiling at him, walking into the shank.

Fleck dialed all but the final digit of the 266 number, glanced at his watch. Almost a minute early. Fleck could still remember the sensation. Holding the narrow blade flat, just as he'd practiced it, feeling it slide between the ribs, flicking the handle back and forth and back again as it penetrated to make certain it cut the artery and the heart. He hadn't really expected it to work. He expected Ca.s.sidy to kill him, or the thing to end with him on trial for premeditated murder and getting nothing better than life and probably the gas chamber. But there was no choice. And Eddy had told him it would be like Ca.s.sidy was being struck by lightning if he did it right.

"Do it right, he shouldn't make a sound," Eddy had said. "It's the shock that does it."

Now it was time. Fleck punched the final digit, heard the beginning of the ring, then The Client's voice.

Fleck brought him up to date, told him about checking on Highhawk, about the woman lawyer showing up there with the cowboy, about Santero driving up and going in and the woman and the cowboy coming out a minute later. He told him about the cowboy walking right up and tapping on his window. "I circled the block and followed them back to the Eastern Market Metro station, and then I dropped it. There's just one of me. Now I want to know who that cowboy is. He's tall. Slender. Dark. Looks like an Indian to me. Narrow face. Leather jacket, boots, cowboy hat, all that. Who the h.e.l.l is he? Something about him smells like cop to me."

"What did he say?"

"He said the woman thought I was following her. I told him he was crazy. Told him to screw off."

"Amateurs!" The Client's voice was full of scorn. It took a moment for Fleck to realize he meant Fleck.

Fleck pressed it. "You know anything at all about the cowboy? Know who he is?"

"G.o.d knows," The Client said. "This is the product of you letting Santero slip away from you. We don't know where he went or who he talked to and we don't know what he did. I warned you about that."

"And I told you about it," Fleck said. "Told you there's just one of me and seven of them, not counting the womenfolk. I can't watch them all all the time."

"Seven?" The Client said. "Was that a slip? You told us you had subtracted one. The old man. You're expecting us to pay you for that."

"Six is the correct number," Fleck said. "Old Man Santillanes is definitely off the list. Did you send the ten thousand?"

"We wait for the full month. Now I wonder if we should also ask to see a little more proof."

"I sent you the G.o.dd.a.m.n billfold. And the false teeth." Fleck sighed. "You're just stalling," he said. "I can see that now. I want that money by tomorrow night."

There was a period of silence from the other end. Fleck noticed the rain had stopped. With his free hand he rolled down the window beside him. Then he picked up the camera and checked the settings.

"The deal is no publicity, no identification for one full month. Then you get the money. After a month. Now I want you to think about Santero. I think he needs to go. The same deal. But remember it can't happen in the District. We can't risk that. It should be a long way outside the Beltway. A long way from here. And no chance of identification. No chance at all of identification."

"I have got to have the ten thousand now," Fleck said. Never lose your temper, Mama had said. Never show them a thing. About all we got going for us, Mama had always told Delmar and him, is they never expect us to do anything at all but crawl there on the ground on our bellies and wait to get stepped on again.

"No," The Client said.

"Tell you what. If you'll have three thousand of it delivered to me tomorrow, then I can wait for the rest of it."

"You can wait anyway," The Client said. And hung up.

Fleck put down the telephone and picked up the camera. It rattled against the door, making him aware that he was shaking with rage. He took a deep breath. Held it. Through the range-finder he saw The Client emerge from the telephone booth, umbrella folded. He stood with hand outstretched, looking around, confirming that the rain had stopped. Fleck had taken four shots before he walked down the sidewalk away from him.

Fleck let The Client get well around the corner before he left the car to follow. He kept a block behind him down Eighteenth Street, and then east to Sixteenth. There The Client turned again. He walked down the row of second-string emba.s.sies and disappeared down a driveway.

Fleck walked past it with only a single sidelong glance. It was just enough to tell him who he was working for.

13.