At Ease with the Dead (21 page)

Daniel Begay knocked on the door. No one answered. He knocked again. Same thing.

He turned to me. “I know some people. Not far from here. Maybe they know where he is.”

“Is there a bar or a restaurant in town? A place where people hang out?”

“The Coyote Tavern.” He frowned slightly. “Not a very good place.”

“Why don't you drop me off and I'll ask around in there. You can take the car and look up your friends. It'll save us some time.”

He nodded. He may have smiled. I wasn't sure.

I realized, as soon as I walked into the dim interior of the Coyote Tavern, that I was the odd man out. For one thing, I wasn't wearing a cowboy hat.

Like everyone else, I was wearing jeans and boots. But my jeans didn't look as though I'd been born wearing them, and my boots didn't look as though I'd be wearing them when I died. Unless I happened to die tonight. There were two or three men at the bar, turning to check me out, who looked like they wouldn't mind arranging that.

Except for the bartender, everyone in the place was an Indian.

Cigarette smoke lay in blue streamers beneath the low wooden ceiling. Willie Nelson's “Whiskey River” was pumping from the jukebox. There were five or six Formica-topped tables scattered around, all of them occupied. I saw only two women in the crowd, both young, both heavy-set, both with the gleaming round faces of Eskimo maidens. I walked across the room and felt glances probe along my back. Here and there, the soles of my boots met something sticky on the black linoleum floor.

At the low-slung bar there were two empty stools. To the left of these, five men sat hunched, ignoring me now—they had decided, apparently, that I represented no immediate threat. To the right, three more men. The drink of choice seemed to be the boilermaker. A shot of whiskey, a bottle of Coors.

The bartender was an aging biker. Big and bearded and brawny, his grizzled long brown hair tied behind his neck in a pony tail, he stood leaning against the back-bar below a lighted Coors sign with his thick arms crossed over his barrel chest. He wore a black leather vest over a black Harley Davidson T-shirt.

The black T-shirt reminded me of Luis, back on the Crownpoint road. I wondered how he was doing. If he'd managed to hitch a ride, he could be in Crownpoint already. He could already be making arrangements with Pablo.

Had Grober shut off Pablo's telephone?

The bartender's glance flicked to the bandages on my hands, flicked to the bruises on my face, and his eyes showed nothing. He'd seen bruises and bandages before. He unfolded his arms and put his hands along the edge of the bar as he leaned toward me. He nodded. “What'll it be?”

I was tempted to order a Brandy Alexander. With a maraschino cherry. And maybe one of those little paper parasols.

I told him Jack Daniels on the rocks and a glass of water.

He pushed himself away from the counter and went to make it.

I moved the stool aside and stepped up to the bar.

The place needed a good cleaning. The bar top was tacky, the air held the sour smell of stale beer. I was hopeful, at any rate, that the sour smell was only the smell of stale beer.

The bartender set the drink in front of me, set the glass of water to its side.

I gave him a five-dollar bill. He turned to the cash register behind him, tapped a key, and the drawer popped out. He scooped out some cash, pushed the drawer shut.

He hadn't rung up the sale. Either he was the owner and scamming the IRS or he was stealing.

He put my change on the bar. Two bills, two quarters. I took a sip of the bourbon, slid a bill toward him, and asked, “You know a guy named Peter Yazzie?”

He shrugged. “I know a lot of guys.”

It's the movies. They give us all a swell selection of snappy patter.

“This one's a Navajo,” I said. “An older man. In his seventies.”

He put his hands along the edge of the bar again. He looked down at the bar, looked back up at me. “What're you? Cop?”

I shook my head. “Private investigator. Look. It's important. I need to get in touch with him.”

He shook his head. “Sorry, guy. Can't help any.”

I was fairly sure that if the bar were empty, if no one were there to hear him—and, naturally, if I'd slipped him some more paper—he would've told me.

I said, “Anyone else been asking about Yazzie?”

He shook his head.

I took another sip of bourbon. The first one had gone off in my stomach like a claymore: I hadn't eaten anything since early this afternoon, before we left Santa Fe.

I asked him, “What time did you come on?”

“Seven.”

“Is the day guy around?”

“Nope.”

I nodded. “Thanks.”

He nodded, picked up the bill, and sauntered to the other end of the bar.

I turned to my right. The old man sitting there was looking up at me from beneath a straw cowboy hat with a curved brim. Clouded brown eyes, toothless gums.

“You know Peter Yazzie?” I said.

He shook his head. “Don't know nobody,” he said. “Don't want to.”

I was making fine progress.

“Hey,” someone said behind me. I turned.

It was a round red face he had, jowly, pockmarked, shiny with sweat, and almost level with my own. The cowboy hat was perched at the back of his broad head. Hisshort black hair was matted in strands to his forehead. His narrow eyes were unfocused and rimmed with red. A wispy mustache shaded his overhanging upper lip. Over his denim shirt he wore a vest of stained, battered sheepskin. His hands were empty. He was large.

“Whaddy you want with Peter Yazzie?” he said. He was perhaps thirty years old, and from his breath he'd been drinking steadily for at least twenty-five of those.

“I want to talk to him,” I said.

“Yeah?” He was weaving very slightly, forward and back. He narrowed his eyes, cocked his head, and said, “I think you should get the fuck outta here.”

I glanced at the bartender. He was still down at the other end of the bar. He appeared to like it down there.

I looked at my new best friend.

White men had plundered his land and raped and robbed and killed his ancestors. White multinational industry was still pillaging the land as we spoke and churning carcinogens into the air above it. A white government agency supervised his life from cradle to grave, treating him and his people at best like wayward children and at worst like animals.

But it had been a rough week. I was in a bad mood. And the booze I'd taken on an empty stomach was already providing its lift, its sham sense of competence and power.

“I don't think so,” I said.

He looked me up and down. His eyes narrowed again as his glance found mine. “I'm drunk,” he announced.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Right now, you could take me.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Me maybe, but what about them?” He waved his arm loosely toward the rest of the crowd.

Most of them were busy talking, either ignoring us or pretending to; and few of them could hear us over the honky-tonk. But at one nearby table, four old men regarded us with mild detached interest, like Nobel Prize winners watching the opening round of “Jeopardy.”

“What about
them
,” he said again.

I turned back to him. “I'll put my wagons in a circle.”

It took a while—almost anything would have taken him a while—but then suddenly he was laughing. “Wagons,” he said, and laughed some more. “Good one. Wagons.” He shook his head. “Good one.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Wagons. You're okay, you know?”

He turned to the left, nodding, and addressed the rest of the bar: “Hey, he's okay.”

No one was thrilled. No one offered to adopt me into the tribe.

His arm still over my shoulder, he said, “Hey, Wagons, lemme buy you a drink.” That breath could've melted chrome.

“No thanks,” I said. I showed him the Jack Daniels. “I've got one.”

“Well, lemme buy
me
a drink.” He turned to the bartender. “Hey! Jerry! Shot of Seagram's!” He turned back to me. “You're the second guy today been askin' about Peter Yazzie.”

His name was John. He didn't tell me his last name. Possibly he'd forgotten what it was. He did tell me that he'd been in the bar all day, which came as no surprise, and that the man asking about Peter Yazzie had arrived at around two o'clock. “Big Mexican guy, a mean-lookin' dude with a mustache.”

Pablo. He
had
come here, and he had beaten us by a full five hours.

Where the hell was Peter Yazzie? And what had he said to Alice Wright?

The day bartender, John said, told Pablo that he didn't know where Peter was, but that Peter's cousin, William, might be able to help. John wasn't sure, but he thought Pablo slipped the bartender some cash and got William's address.

Apparently, the day man had less scruples than Jerry, the biker. Or maybe just less witnesses.

“Where does William live?” I asked John.

He waved a hand vaguely. “North.”

I didn't push it.

John said, “But if old Peter don' wanna get found, he ain' gonna get found.” He nodded with a drunk's slow, deliberate certitude. “No way, Wagons. No way. If he's up in them mountains up there, ain' no way nobody gonna find him. Not any damn Mexican, that's for sure.”

“Why would he go up into the mountains?”

He frowned into his empty shot glass. “Didn' say he did. Didn' say he didn'.” He looked at me, his head a bit unsteady on his neck, and suddenly he scowled. “You ask an awful lot of questions.”

Maybe we wouldn't be blood brothers after all.

Just then, off to my left, a quiet voice said, “John.”

We both turned, John a little more slowly than I.

Daniel Begay stood there, hands on the knob of his cane.

John's face lit up. “Hey!
Hosteen
Begay!”

Braced against his cane, expressionless, Daniel Begay leaned toward him, looking up into the round face, and said something in Navajo. His voice was low and very soft. I was probably the only other person in the bar who could hear it.

John's face fell. His shoulders sank. “Well,” he began, but didn't finish.

Daniel Begay was still speaking, softly, firmly.

John nodded. He looked at Daniel Begay. He nodded again, abashed, like a guilty child who's been told to go stand in the corner.

Daniel Begay stepped back. Without another word, head lowered, John walked away from the bar, across the room, and out the front door. It seemed to me that the people in the bar devoted a lot of energy to ignoring this.

Daniel Begay moved into the space John had left at the bar. The big bartender, Jerry, was already there, leaning forward deferentially. “Get you something, Mr. Begay?”

“A Coca-Cola,” Daniel said.

Jerry shuffled off to get it. Daniel Begay watched him, and for the first time since I'd known him I thought I saw displeasure on his face. Nothing much: just a faint contraction around the eyes and mouth.

I told him, “Pablo was here.”

He nodded. “He was at Peter Yazzie's house today. Someone saw him and the other man.”

Ramon.

I asked him, “Did anyone see what kind of car were they driving?”

“A Ford. Blue.”

Jerry returned with the glass of Coke and set it before Daniel Begay. “On the house, Mr. Begay.”

Daniel Begay nodded. “Thank you.”

As Jerry left, Daniel Begay watched him once more.

“You don't like him?” I said, and nodded to Jerry.

He shrugged lightly. “It's not him. He's okay, I guess. It's his job. He sells alcohol. It's a poison.”

I'd been about to take another sip of my bourbon. I decided it could wait.

I asked him, “What else did your friends have to say?”

He took a sip of his Coke. “A sheriff's car went to Peter Yazzie's house on Friday night.”

“Asking questions, probably, for the El Paso police,” I said.

Daniel Begay nodded. “After they went, he packed his stuff into his truck and he left.”

“The sheriff must've told him about Alice Wright's death. Maybe Yazzie thought that the information he gave her was what got her killed. Maybe he thought he was next.”

Daniel Begay nodded. “Maybe.”

I said, “Do your friends know where he went?”

“He's got a cabin in the mountains. Up north of here. Probably there.”

“How far is it?”

“Fifty miles, about.”

“You find out where it is?”

He nodded.

“Where?”

“I got to show you.”

I said, “Daniel, I think it's probably a better idea if you stay here.”

He said, “It's hard to find. Impossible.”

No small smile now. He planned to come.

I didn't like it, but there are a lot of things I don't like, and I can't do much about any of them. I said, “John told me that Peter Yazzje has a cousin. William”

Daniel Begay nodded. “I know.”

“You know where he lives?”

He nodded. “I found out.”

“The other bartender, the day guy, told Pablo about him. I'd guess that Pablo went there. I think we should check him out. See what Pablo had to say.”

He nodded.

We stopped at the local Thriftway and I bought some sandwiches and two containers of coffee. Daniel Begay wanted to pay for it. I reminded him that I owed him a meal. He nodded. We drank the coffee as I drove.

A bit north of town, I followed Daniel's directions and left the highway for a dirt side road.

William Yazzie's house was the last one on the road, perhaps a hundred yards beyond the nearest neighbor's. It was a small, one-story frame building, ramshackle, sagging slightly to the right, like a wall-mounted picture that had been brushed by a negligent shoulder. No lights were on, inside or out. Weeds tufted the plot of rocky ground in front. I pulled into the driveway, behind an old Dodge pickup.