Sacred Clowns

Chapter 6

JANET WAS WEARING a blue skirt, a white shirt that looked to Jim Chee’s unpracticed eye like some sort of silk, and a little jacket that matched the skirt. The total effect was to make Miss Pete look chic, sophisticated, and beautiful. All of this caused in Chee strong but ambiguous feelings – on the one hand a soaring joy at the beauty of this young woman, and on the other a leaden sense of doubt that she would ever, ever, ever settle for him. She slid into the booth with the autumn sunlight reflecting through her glossy black hair.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said, dazzling him with a rueful smile. She looked at her watch. So did Chee. It looked expensive. A gift, he guessed, from the lawyer she had worked with in Washington. And lived with and, presumably, loved. Being the token redskin, as she had told him herself, in the Washington, D.C., firm of Dalman, MacArthur, White, and Hertzog.

“Eight minutes late,” she said. “In Washington, I could blame it on the traffic. In Window Rock, no traffic to blame it on, so that won’t work.”

“Eight minutes you don’t mention,” Chee said. “You have to be a lot later than that to claim you’re working on Navajo time.” He noticed that his voice sounded perfectly natural.

“I have an excuse, though. The phone rang just as I was leaving. It was Roger Applebee. He’s staying at the inn here. You remember me telling you about him.”

“Sure,” Chee said. “The Nature First guy. I’d like to talk to him. We got a glimpse of him there at Tano. What’s he doing in Window Rock?”

“What everybody’s doing in Window Rock,” she said. “He’s lobbying.” She gestured around the room. The tables in the coffee shop of the Navajo Nation Inn were crowded with Navajos in their best boots and silver and with white men in dark business suits. “When the Tribal Council’s in session it draws the lawyers like, like-” She searched for the proper simile.

“I’d say like a dead sheep draws crows,” Chee said. “But since you’re a lawyer yourself, I guess I won’t.”

“How about like honey draws bears,” she said. “That sounds nicer. By the way, Roger told me he saw your letter in the Times. He liked it. He said he thought it was the best way to attack it.”

Chee found himself reacting as he did too often to praise from Janet Pete. Embarrassment. “Did you do some of that when you worked in Washington? Lobby, I mean.”

“Not much,” Janet said. “One branch of the firm sort of specialized in representing tribes, and fights over tribal water rights. That sort of thing. All sorts of disagreements involving Indian affairs.” She laughed. “Need I say we were on whatever side of the affair had the money to spend. But mostly I just did research and paperwork. They only sent me over to lobby for something when they needed a real Indian to look good for a liberal congressman.”

“You would have looked good to me,” Chee said. “I like real Indian ladies.”

She smiled at him. “I try to look good,” she said. “How do you like this new shirt?”

Chee inspected it, trying not to stare at the curve of her breasts too obviously and to think of exactly the right thing to say. He rejected two ideas as inappropriate, and decided on “wonderful.” But before he could say it, a big voice just behind him said:

“Hey, Janet. I wondered if I’d run into you. Someone said you’d come back out here.”

“Hello, Ed,” Janet said, in a carefully neutral voice. “How are you?”

Ed was standing beside their table now, looking down at them. “Just fine,” he said. “Maybe getting a little old for all this traveling. How about you, though? You’re looking good.”

“Jim,” Janet said. “This is Ed Zeck. Ed Zeck, Jim Chee. Ed’s one of the associates in Dalman and so forth. He runs the Santa Fe operation. He’s sort of an expert on Pueblo water rights, and lands claims, and things like that. That made him one of my multitude of bosses. And Mr. Chee is an officer of the Navajo Tribal Police.”

“Don’t get up,” Zeck said to Chee. He offered his hand and Chee shook it. He was a big man, over six feet tall, Chee guessed, and broad, with a round, friendly face and a receding hairline. His eyes were blue, made to look even lighter than they were by his dark, suntanned complexion. Those eyes were now studying Chee, full of thought. Chee’s instant impression was of power, self-confidence, and the easygoing nature with which power and self-confidence seemed to endow some white men.

“I hope I’m not intruding here,” Zeck said to Chee. “But if you’re arresting Janet, reading her rights before you take her in, maybe I can get a job representing her.”

“We’re just talking,” Chee said, wishing he had said something witty and hoping that Janet wouldn’t invite this man to join them. Nothing against Zeck, just that he didn’t want Janet distracted.

“Jim Chee,” Zeck said. “I seem to connect that name to a letter in the Navajo Times. Am I right? Same Jim Chee?”

“Same Chee.”

Zeck’s expression was less friendly. “I didn’t realize the writer was a tribal policeman,” Zeck said. “Wasn’t that pretty political for a policeman?”

“We don’t sign away our First Amendment rights,” Chee said. He wasn’t quite sure how to handle this so he laughed and said, “It was just another way to defend the people from the bad guys.”

And then he sat there feeling foolish, conscious of how pompous that must have sounded.

“The bad guys in this case being Ed’s client,” Janet said. “Is that correct, Ed? Is the firm handling Continental Collectors these days?”

“That’s us,” Zeck said. “Working as always to bring a little economic development where it’s needed.”

“Are you staying at the Navajo Nation Inn?” Janet asked, obviously eager to change the subject. “I’d like to call you and catch up on old times. What’s the conventional wisdom on the Hill? Who is double-crossing whom with the new bunch in the White House? All the gossip.”

“Wonderful,” Zeck said. “Even though all the gossip doesn’t leak down to Santa Fe.” He fished his room key from his pocket, inspected it. “Two-seventeen,” he said. “I’m having dinner with a couple of councilmembers tonight, but I’ll be in after that.”

“What else are you pushing with the tribe?” Janet said. “Does the firm still represent Peabody Coal?”

“We lost ’em,” Zeck said. “I’m here this time solely as counsel for Continental Collectors Corporation. They’re lining up the paperwork to use an old strip mine over in New Mexico as a waste disposal site. Hire a hundred or so local folks at about eighteen dollars an hour to handle the machinery. Cause a big reduction in the unemployment rate. Put a big influx of property tax money into the school funds. And, after it fills up in about a hundred years, get that old hole in the ground reclaimed under a thick layer of topsoil so grass will grow on it. Mr. Chee here can tell you all about it.”

“Yes,” Janet said. “It sounds great if you like a garbage landfill in your backyard.”

“You know anything that could be helpful?” Zeck asked. He glanced down at Chee and then back at Janet. “I think we might need a legal consultant here.”

“I’m working for the Navajo Nation,” Janet said. “I’m not for-” She paused, picking the word. “ – for hire,” she concluded.

“It would be a great way to represent the tribe,” Zeck said. “I know it’s mostly on Tano land, not on the reservation, but the rail spurs cross some Checkerboard land so it’d be worth something to have the Council for it.”

“I’ve heard it would be a toxic waste dump,” Chee said. “Chemicals. Maybe radioactive stuff. Why don’t you store it there at Santa Fe? Or in Connecticut. Or Maryland. Someplace near your own backyard.”

Zeck smiled down at him. “I bet you know the answer to that. It would cost too much money. They don’t have a big, empty open pit mine back there in Connecticut with the roads and railroad tracks already built.”

“And nonunion labor,” Janet said.

Zeck transferred his smile to her. “That, too,” he said. “Labor is cheaper out here. I’ll bet you’ve noticed that yourself.”

“I took a pay cut,” she said. “But it costs a person less to live out here. Costs less than Washington I mean. And I’m not talking about money.”

Zeck’s smile widened. “Janet,” he said, “you haven’t lost your sting, have you? But have you become a tree hugger? Or, as we call them in dilettante Santa Fe, a fern fondler?”

She didn’t answer because another voice from behind Chee was saying, “Aha, Miss Pete. I have caught you consorting with the enemy.”

“Here comes the man from Nature First,” Zeck said. “Hello, Roger. How are you?”

“Fine,” the man said. “How about you?”

“I think Janet and I are both losing it. We’re arguing, and we’re both lawyers, and lawyers don’t argue without getting paid for it. With that I have to leave you.”

So did the man from Nature First. “I’ll be right back,” he said to Janet. “I want to tell the waitress not to hold that table for me.”

Zeck looked after him, then down at Janet. “Well,” he said, “I think you already have a luncheon conference. Or is it a consultancy?” He chuckled. “I’ll see you later.”

“He’s not joining us, is he?” Chee asked. “That second guy?”

“That’s Applebee. I guess he’s out here working the other side – trying to stop the waste dump. You said you’d like to talk to him,” Janet said. “Here’s your chance. He wanted to see me, so I asked him to join us.”

“Oh.” He’d intended it to sound neutral, but it came out disappointed.

Janet looked up at him. “I guess I could have gotten out of it. I could still meet him later. But he’ll want to talk about the waste dump and you’re interested in that. Or I thought you were.”

“That’s okay,” Chee said. “Sure I am.”

“Did you want to talk to me privately? You know. Not just for a chat?”

Chee managed a grin. “Always,” he said. “I want your undivided attention. Just you and me. We just shut out the world.”

She grinned back at him. “Getting romantic? You must be running out of girlfriends. Or is it just the season? That time of year?”

“You’re thinking of spring,” Chee said. “This is autumn. That’s the time to be serious.”

Janet’s small grin developed into a laugh. Clearly she didn’t think Chee was serious. “So, go ahead,” she said. “Be serious. And with this buildup, it better be good.”

Chee, who had sipped two-thirds of his coffee while waiting, finished the rest of it. What did he want to say? Come live with me and be my love, he’d say. I think of you when I’m trying to go to sleep. I think of you when I’m awake. I dream of you. I - And, thinking of nothing appropriate to say, he just looked at her.

“Go ahead,” she said. “I know what you’re after. You want to pump me about Eugene Ahkeah.”

“No I don’t,” Chee said.

“Yes you do. Any time I’m representing anyone in a case you’re involved with, you always push me right to the edge of violating professional ethics.”

“I don’t care anything about Ahkeah,” Chee insisted. “I’ve never seen him. Never talked to him. Don’t have anything to do with that. That’s Lieutenant Leaphorn’s baby.”

“You work for Leaphorn.”

“Okay,” Chee said. “If you insist, what should I ask you about Ahkeah?”

“He didn’t do it.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Chee said. “I’ll tell the lieutenant to turn him loose.”

Janet looked surprised. “Really,” she said. “You don’t want to ask me about Ahkeah?”

“Better yet,” Chee said, “you go tell Leaphorn Ahkeah is innocent. But I want to ask you to go to Gallup with me. Have dinner. Go to a movie. So forth. How about it?”

Now she looked skeptical. “You could have asked me that on the telephone.”

“What would you have said?”

But Janet was looking past his shoulder. “Here he comes,” she said. And Roger Applebee was at their booth, smiling and nodding.

He was not quite as young as he looked at first glance, perhaps fifty-five or so, small, slender, blond hair worn long, and in the proper garb for an autumn day in Window Rock, Arizona, the desert West. His boots had been polished a few days ago, his jeans were faded, his bolo tie was loose and decorated with a silver bear claw, and his pale blue shirt hung open the standard two buttons. Taken all together, Applebee was a handsome man. He looked totally healthy. Outdoorsy, Chee thought. But shining through the good looks was a fierce intensity which made short work of the usual small talk. Applebee was the sort who got to the heart of the matter. And the first matter was Jim Chee.

“I liked your letter,” he said. “The one in the newspaper the other day.” And while he was saying it, he was looking past Chee at Janet Pete, expression quizzical, asking the wordless question. Can this man be trusted to hear what we say? Will he be discreet?

“Mr. Chee is with the Navajo Tribal Police,” she said, motioning Applebee into the booth. “As you know, he doesn’t like seeing our part of the world made a dumping ground any better than I do. And he is used to listening, and keeping what he hears to himself.”

“Tribal Police,” Applebee said, examining Chee. He smiled. “Do you know Sergeant Eddie Nakai over at Many Farms? He sold me a silver pollen flask once. Very, very old. I sometimes collect the old stuff.”

“I’ve met him,” Chee said.

That produced from Applebee a smile. “Are you assigned to this business?”

“No,” Chee said. “No. Just interested.”

The Applebee smile disappeared. “Well,” he said, and hesitated, caught his lip between his teeth, released it, exhaled. “I’ll give you a rundown first. The bad, and then the good. From what we hear in Washington, everything is go in the Interior Department. Continental has its well-placed buddies, and your friend Zeck went back there last week to join in the lobbying. We’re told that the Bureau of Land Management has agreed to withdraw the acreage they hold from grazing – with a payoff to the leaseholders of course. That’s bad, but it’s what we expected. That leaves the Navajo Nation and Tano.”

He paused, acknowledged the waitress standing beside him, and ordered a hamburger.

“Coffee?”

“What kind of tea do you have?”

The waitress was a plump Navajo teenager from Two Grey Hills who had often waited on Chee since his transfer to Window Rock. She raised her eyebrows, puzzled. “Iced,” she said. “Iced tea.”

“No. No. I mean what kind of herb tea. Do you have Lemon Zinger? Almond Sunset? Or any of those Celestial flavors? And hot tea. Just bring me a cup of hot water and the tea bag.” Applebee looked back at Janet. “We also think we have some hope in Tano. Governor Penitewa is still favoring the idea as far as we can tell, but they have their election coming up in January and a lot of people in that pueblo don’t want that dump on Pueblo land. The governor can be beaten. There’s a way we can beat him.”

Applebee paused. The waitress was still standing there, looking indecisive. “Just bring me a cup, and a pot of hot water, and any tea bag you can find in the kitchen,” he said.

“How about here?” Chee asked. “Will the Tribal Council approve moving that toxic stuff across our land?”

“Not so good, here, by the looks of it,” Applebee said. “Councilman Chester is working hard for the dump. We’re worried about that.”

Chee was watching Janet. She said nothing, which pleased him. That was properly polite Navajo. Like Blizzard, she was an urban product. City bred, city raised, Navajo only by her father’s blood. She had to learn what it was like to be one of the Dineh. He would help teach her. Happily. Lovingly. If she would let him.

Applebee decided he wasn’t getting the expected sounds of support and approval. “Well,” he said, “let’s talk about Mr. Chester.” He looked at Chee. “Do you know him?”

“From Horse Mesa Chapter?” Chee asked. “Jimmy Chester? I know him a little.”

“What do you think of him?”

Chee shrugged. “I’m a policeman,” he said. “We don’t have opinions about politicians.”

“How about your aunt?” Janet asked. “The councilwoman.”

“She’s a former councilwoman now,” Chee corrected. “It’s allowed to have opinions about kinfolks.”

“I just didn’t want to say the wrong thing if Chester was a friend. Or something,” Applebee said.

“Nope,” Chee said. “I can say I know he’s a big operator in the cattle business out in the Checkerboard. And the people I knew when I was working out of Crownpoint thought Chester was a jerk.”

Applebee seemed relieved to hear this.

“Well,” he began, voice lowered, “We hear…” He stopped, and waited silently while the waitress deposited cup, saucer, tea bag, a large coffee thermos from which steam was rising, and a slice of lemon. He read the label on the tea bag, frowned, and made tea. “We hear that Councilman Chester is a consultant for Continental.”

He looked at Janet and then at Chee. Clearly this was the reason for this meeting, the message to be delivered. It seemed to Chee more of a firecracker than a bombshell. But Applebee was checking their faces, looking for reaction. “Taking money,” he explained.

“It’s probably legal enough,” Janet said. “But it can be bad politics and he’s up for reelection in the spring.”

Applebee looked surprised. “Really? You think it’s legal?”

“I’d have to check the tribal code. It prohibits councilmembers from voting on anything in which they have a personal financial interest. I doubt if it goes beyond that, but I’ll check.”

Applebee looked disappointed. “So it would just mean Chester couldn’t vote on the dump issue. I was hoping we could put the son-of-a-bitch in jail.”

“You have some evidence?” Janet asked. “Do you know how much they’re paying him? Any details? He’ll be trying to get the Horse Mesa Chapter to pass a resolution backing the dump. The Tribal Council usually goes along with whatever the local chapters want in their own district. And if the people out at Horse Mesa know he’s being paid to sell them on the dump – well, it makes them suspicious.”

“I don’t have anything on paper,” Applebee said. He gestured disappointment with his hands. “Nothing you’d call concrete evidence.”

“Nothing he can’t deny?” Janet asked. “What’s your source of information?”

Applebee examined his teacup and ignored both questions. “I think I can get something,” he said. He sipped, thoughtful.

“Something?” Janet asked.

Applebee smiled. “Something useful,” he said. “I think I know how I can get something he can’t deny.”