Sacred Clowns

Chapter 13

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.”

For a moment the only sound was the tape running.

“All right then,” Zeck said. “Twenty-two thousand something. I’ll have to do some transferring around. Tell ’em you’ll have it for ’em Monday.”

“And none of this ‘check in the mail’ crap,” Chester said.

“I’ll make it a cashier’s check,” Zeck said.

“And what do you hear from Tano?”

“Nothing much. I think we’re all right there. Bert Penitewa’s for it. He’s a popular man there and Tano pretty well does what the governor wants. It’s not split like your Navajo council. There, the governor’s also the big man in one of the religious kivas.”

“I know,” Chester said.

“We should just leave that alone then, you think? Anything else going on I ought to know about?”

“Nothing,” Chester said. “You go on down and get that money transferred. And it’s not twenty-two thousand something. It’s twenty-two thousand five hundred and thirty. Maybe those banks don’t charge anything to loan money to you bilagaana guys, but us Navajos have to pay interest. Twenty-two thousand five hundred and thirty.”

“And some-odd cents, which we’ll round off. So yaa’ eh t’eeh for now.”

There was a click, and then only the sound of the tape running.

Chee let it run until it shut itself off. Then he rewound it, replayed the conversation, and rewound it again. He had decided where it must have come from. Who else but Roger Applebee? The environmentalist had said he knew a way to get some evidence proving Jimmy Chester was corrupt. And he had gotten it. Probably with an illegal wiretap. Actually, not a wiretap these days. More likely one of those gadgets that pick up mobile telephone conversations. He’d seen one in an electronics supply store in Farmington. But still, the tape wouldn’t be usable in court or even before a grand jury. If it was illegal, and it probably was, how could it be used?

He was thinking about that when the telephone rang.

“Joe Leaphorn’s office.”

“Joe? Is Jim Chee still working on that hit-and-run vehicular homicide case?” It was the voice of the Window Rock dispatcher. “The one where-”

“This is Chee,” Chee said. “The lieutenant’s away from his office.”

“Hey, man. You lucked out. Your suspect just confessed. Right over the radio.”

“Confessed? What d’ya mean?”

“He drove up to KNDN in Farmington, and walked in where they have that open mike for the public to make announcements on, and he said he did it, and he was sorry, and he was going to make restitution. He said he was drunk. Said he didn’t know he’d hit the man.”

“Who was it?”

“We haven’t got him yet. He walked out and drove away.”

“Wonderful,” Chee said. “Didn’t they call the cops? The people at the station?”

“I guess so. Everybody’s looking for him. Farmington police, New Mexico state cops, San Juan Sheriff’s Department. Our people at Shiprock. Everybody.”

“Well,” Chee said. “I guess I’ll go join ’em.” It was three hours over the mountain to Farmington, but the hit-and-run was his baby. Jimmy Chester would have to wait.