Dark Reservations (2 page)

“Get Stretch. Or your wonder boy Cordelli.”

“You refusing the assignment?” Dale leaned back in his chair. “If so, I can put you out right now. You're the one with a kid in college, not me.”

Joe lowered his gaze, not because he was hurt or beaten, but because he knew if he stared at that puffed-up face any longer, he might launch himself across the desk.

“You're an asshole.” He snatched up the paper and stormed out.

He marched past Stretch to his own cubicle, where he flung down the officer's number.

What the hell was Dale's game? He'd already won, had already gotten the board to force through Joe's retirement, had already ruined his life. In the end, they had agreed that if Joe didn't fight the review board's decision, he could use his remaining time to wrap up cases and find a job. Now it seemed that deal was off.

He opened his center desk drawer and grabbed for his bottle of aspirin, what he thought of as his morning-after pill. He fumbled with the lid, his fingers jittery. It had nothing to do with his need for a drink. He wanted to punch Dale in his smug, fat face, not fiddle with the childproof dot and arrow.

He threw the bottle at his computer. The lid popped. White tablets sprayed over the papers and folders and a crumpled burrito wrapper on his desk.

He picked up two pills. Chewed them. Their chalky texture coated his mouth, not quite overpowering the bitter taste Dale's words had left.

“What'd he want?” Stretch asked.

“He wants me to work the Edgerton case.”

“The vehicle? It's FBI. What's he want you to do with it?”

Joe picked up the paper with Bluehorse's phone number.

“I guess he wants me to find Edgerton.”

S
EPTEMBER
23

T
HURSDAY
, 10:42
P.M.

O
THMANN
E
STATE
, S
ANTA
F
E
, N
EW
M
EXICO

Arthur Othmann unfolded the clear plastic painter's tarp and spread it over the bone white carpet in his study. He stepped back to appraise his handiwork and then repositioned it so the sides were parallel to the display cabinets that ran the length of the room.

“Perfect,” he said to no one.

Muted voices carried from another part of the house.

He checked his watch, then smiled up at the oil portrait of his father, Alexander Othmann, founder of the once Great Pacific Mining Company, now both defunct. “They're right on time, Pops.”

The portrait's massive gold-leaf wood frame, ornately carved, clashed with the Native American artifacts displayed in the cabinets along the walls. Its shimmering trim and grotesque size gave it an otherworldly quality, a doorway to the spirit world, what the Navajo might call
Xajiinai.
According to their creation story, the Navajo emerged through
Xajiinai,
a hole in the La Plata Mountains of southwestern Colorado that allowed them to ascend from the underworld. Othmann knew all about Navajo history. It was, after all, their past that fed his passion for the arts. His father had never shared that passion. In fact, he hated that his only son, the last male carrier of the Othmann bloodline, was interested in the arts and was “a little light in his goddamn pants!” Toward the end of his life, his father would growl those words through wrinkled brown lips wrapped around a Padrón cigar, which looked like a shovel handle sticking out of the old man's face. The son didn't care about understanding his father, only outliving him. Not hard, considering the old bastard had been in his seventies when Arthur finished college. And during those seven years after his return from Stanford, where he'd studied art history, they had lived together in the house, with only a maid and a nurse (his mother had died his first year away—not a great loss), and it was during those seven years that the son had often fantasized about that shovel handle.

Once, after acquiring a rather spectacular ninth-century Anasazi watering bowl, he had shared his thoughts of the portrait with his bodyguard, David “Books” Drud, over a glass of celebratory scotch. “I like to think it's a portal to the afterlife, and my father visits from time to time to see how I'm spending his money. And I get to kill the old bastard all over again.” Books gave a respectful chuckle and sipped the five-thousand-dollar-a-bottle whisky. But Othmann had not been joking.

The voices were in the hallway now.

He strode over to the stone mantel behind his desk. Atop it sat a wood carving of a rug-weaving loom. The tiny weaver's seat had been hollowed out and a miniature camera installed. In a darkened room ten feet below the study, a twenty-five-terabyte digital recorder captured every moment on Othmann's estate. He never skimped on security.

The door opened.

A middle-aged Navajo man stumbled in. Strands of long, black hair stuck to his face. His dirty clothes and the black patch over his left eye gave him the appearance of a down-on-his-luck desert pirate. At one time, this had been Othmann's prized silversmith, whose work had been shown at the Smithsonian and sold in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré district in Paris. But when the Navajo silversmith had lost his eye in a drunken brawl four years earlier, he also lost his talent. Now he was just Eddie Begay, the snitch.

Books stepped behind Eddie, his imposing figure clogging the doorway. He shoved the skinny man forward. Eddie's feet failed to keep up, and he fell to his knees onto the plastic tarp.

Eddie had grown comfortable groveling these past few years; alcohol seemed to lubricate his humility. Kneeling on the floor, he actually looked somewhat at ease.

“You doing some remodeling, Mr. O?” Eddie said.

Books moved to stand behind their guest.

“I thought we were friends, Eddie,” Othmann said, his voice soft, with just a touch of hurt.

“We are. You're my
bil naa'aash.
”

“Cousin-brother. I like that. Yes, I suppose we are brothers of a sort. Brothers in art.”

Eddie must have put up a fight because Books's right trouser leg was muddied and torn. Othmann was curious.

“His dog didn't like it when I put Eddie in the car,” Books said, his voice slow, tired, as though his words had traveled a long way before passing his lips.

“He killed my dog, Mr. O. He slammed her head in the car door.”

“It was practically dead anyway,” Books said. “Nothing but skin and bones. You people don't take care of your dogs.”

“Fuck you, man.”

Books was fast. Othmann almost missed it. He heard a slap, and then Eddie's head snapped forward.

“Eddie,” Othmann said. “Look at me, Eddie. A little birdie told me you got caught diddling a kid.”

“I never done nothing like that. I got a woman. I don't touch kids. If anyone told you that, they're just trying to mess up our business arrangement.”

“That's exactly what I wanted to talk to you about, our business arrangement.”

Eddie squinted. “I thought you were happy with the carving.”

“Oh, I'm very happy with it. And I have it on good authority it's authentic.”

The carving was a chunk of stone with a thousand-year-old petroglyph of a spiral-beaked bird that Eddie had chiseled from a cliff at Chaco Canyon. It now sat below them as part of Othmann's very private and very illegal collection in an environmentally controlled vault. And in that same vault was the recorder that was, at that very moment, capturing Eddie Begay's every word.

Othmann continued. “Why don't you tell us what the police are accusing you of, Eddie?”

“This is bullshit. I'm not telling you any—”

Books drove a knee to the back of his head. Eddie did a face plant on the tarp. He didn't move.

They waited.

“I hope you didn't kill him.”

Books shrugged.

Eddie let out a sound somewhere between a whimper and a groan and struggled back to his knees. His eye patch had shifted, granting Othmann an unwanted view of a black sunken hole. Was that what
Xajiinai
was? Black and bottomless? Not like his father's portrait at all. Maybe Eddie was the portal to communicate with the dead, to communicate with good ol' Pops.

“What did they say you did?” Othmann asked.

Eddie took several deep breaths. His good eye seemed unable to focus. “They said … they said I touched my sister's boy. But I didn't.”

Othmann walked around to the front of his desk, careful not to block the camera's view. “And what did you tell the FBI about me?”

“How did you know it was the FBI?”

“Eddie, it's time to be honest. I need to know I can trust you. Now, what did you tell them about me?”

“Nothing. Why would I talk about you? They were asking about my nephew.”

“Did you tell them about the carving?”

“No.” Eddie's voice was high.

“What do you think, David? Did he talk?”

“He talked. A man that can't take care of his dog isn't loyal to anyone.”

“Are you loyal, Eddie?”

“Yes—”

Another knee to the back of his head.

They waited.

Books wrinkled his nose. “I think he shit himself.”

A minute passed.

Eddie regained consciousness. He groaned. Blood dripped from his nose onto the plastic.

“Oh man.” Eddie pulled at the seat of his pants.

“Stay on the tarp,” Othmann said.

The broken man sat back on his knees, swaying. A silver and turquoise squash-blossom necklace, which Eddie usually wore beneath his shirt, now hung exposed on his chest. It had been handed down through his family, originally belonging to his great-grandfather, who had been the chief of his clan before the Long Walk. Its craftsmanship was some of the best work Othmann had ever seen. But no matter how tough things had gotten for Eddie, he had never parted with his great-grandfather's legacy.

“Eddie, Eddie. Why are you doing this to yourself? It's a simple question. I already know the answer, but I want to hear you say it.”

“Okay … but don't let him knee me anymore. I'm seeing double.”

“David, don't knee him anymore.”

“Okay, boss.”

Eddie stared as Books unbuckled his belt. Books pulled it from his waistband and grasped both ends in his right hand, letting the loop dangle by his side.

Eddie whimpered.

“What did you tell the FBI about me?”

Eddie licked his lips, smearing the trickle of blood from his nose, spreading it wide, giving himself a clown's red mouth.

“You're right. I'm sorry. I got scared. Real scared. I was never in trouble like that before.”

“What did you tell them?”

“That I used to make jewelry for you, and when I couldn't do that anymore, I started getting you things.”

“What things?”

“I told them about the prayer sticks … and the artifacts.”

“Did you tell them about the Chaco carving?”

Eddie hung his head.

“And they want you to talk to the grand jury, right?”

“I'll disappear. I have a cousin in California. I can hide out there. Really. I won't talk to them again. I promise.”

“I know you won't.”

Books dropped the belt loop over Eddie's head.

The silversmith clawed at the thin strip of leather.

Othmann stared into the dying man's empty eye socket.

Later that night, in the environmentally controlled vault below, while replaying the hidden-camera footage, feeling the effects of Cuervo Black and a line of Christmas powder, Othmann would think about this moment and tell himself he saw his father staring out of that depthless black hole, the tip of his cigar glowing with the brilliance of hellfire, and his wrinkled lips mouthing the words
You're a little light in your goddamn pants!

S
EPTEMBER
24

F
RIDAY
, 9:38
A.M.

B
UREAU
OF
I
NDIAN
A
FFAIRS
, O
FFICE
OF
I
NVESTIGATIONS
, A
LBUQUERQUE
, N
EW
M
EXICO

Supervisory Special Agent in Charge Dale Warren thumbed through a copy of that month's issue of
Model Cars Magazine,
pausing on an article about applying alclad chrome to bumpers and grilles. His cell phone rang. He recognized the number and answered.

“It's assigned,” he said. “I gave it to one of my … older agents.” Dale disconnected the call without waiting for a response.

Then he picked up the 1952 Moebius Hudson Hornet convertible parked at the edge of his desk and eyed its bumpers. The metallic paint was dull and pitted from a poor application he'd attempted the previous summer. He laid the car back down and returned to the article.

S
EPTEMBER
24

F
RIDAY
, 10:31
A.M.

J
ONES
R
ANCH
R
OAD
, C
HI
C
HIL
T
AH
(N
AVAJO
N
ATION
), N
EW
M
EXICO

Joe pulled his Tahoe behind the marked Navajo Police vehicle and stepped out. They were parked on the side of Jones Ranch Road in Chi Chil Tah, a small Navajo community twenty miles southwest of Gallup, consisting of a school, a small housing development, some scattered trailers and ranch homes, and a chapter house, the Navajo equivalent of a town hall. The blacktop had ended about four miles back, and now he stood on hard-packed clay surrounded by piñon trees.