Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 05] (16 page)

T
he dispatcher reached chee
just as he turned off the Burnt Water-Wepo Wash road onto the pavement of Navajo Route 3. She had a tip from the Arizona Highway Patrol. One of their units had watched Priscilla Bisti and her boys loading six cases of wine into her pickup truck at Winslow that morning. Mrs. Bisti had been observed driving northward toward the Navajo Reservation on Arizona 58.

"What time?"

"About ten-fourteen," the dispatcher said.

"Anything else?"

"No."

"Can you check my desk and see if I got any telephone messages?"

"I'm not supposed to," the dispatcher said. The dispatcher was Shirley Topaha. Shirley Topaha was just two years out of Tuba City High School, where she had been a cheerleader for the Tuba City Tigers. She had pretty eyes, and very white teeth, and perfect skin, and a plump figure. Chee had noticed all this, along with her tendency to flirt with all officers, visitors, prisoners, etc., requiring only that they be male.

"The captain won't notice it," Chee said. "It might save me a lot of time. It would really be nice if you did."

"I'll call you back," the dispatcher said.

That came about five minutes later. It came about two minutes after Chee had turned his patrol car westward toward Moenkopi and Tuba City. Which was too bad, because it meant he had to stop and turn around.

"Two calls," Shirley said. "One says call Johnson, Drug Enforcement Agency, and there's this number in Flagstaff." She gave him the number. "And the other says please call Miss Pauling at the Hopi motel."

"Thanks, Shirley," Chee said.

"Ten-four," said Shirley.

The man at the desk of the Hopi Cultural Center motel rang Miss Pauling's telephone five times and declared that she wasn't in. Chee checked the motel dining room. She was sitting at a corner table, a cup of coffee in front of her, immersed in a Phoenix
Gazette
.

"You left a call for me," Chee said. "Did Gaines come back?"

"Yes," Miss Pauling said. "Sit down. Do you know how to tap a telephone?" She looked intense, excited.

"Tap a telephone?" Chee sat down. "What's going on?"

"There was a message for Gaines," Miss Pauling said. "Someone called and left it. They'd call back at four, and if he wanted me to make an arrangement, to be in his room to take the call."

"The clerk showed you the message?"

"Sure," she said. "He checked us in together, and we got adjoining rooms. But we don't have much time." She glanced at her watch. "Less than half an hour. Can we get the telephone tapped?"

"Miss Pauling," Chee said. "This is Second Mesa, Arizona. I don't know how to tap a telephone."

"I think it's easy," she said.

"It looks easy on television," Chee said. "But you have to have some sort of equipment. And you have to know how."

"You could call somebody?"

"Not and get a telephone tapped in anything less than about three days," Chee said. "In the Navajo Police, it's out of our line of work. If you call the
fbi
in Phoenix, they'd know how, but they'd have to get a court order." And then, Chee thought, there's Johnson of the
dea
, who wouldn't worry about a court order, and would probably have the equipment in his hip pocket. He wondered why Johnson wanted him to call. Whatever, it was a call he didn't intend to make.

Miss Pauling looked stricken. She worried her lower lip with her teeth.

"How about just listening at the wall?" Chee asked. "Where do they put the telephones? Could you hear from one room to the next?"

Miss Pauling thought about it. "I doubt it," she said. "Not even if he talked loud."

Chee glanced at his watch. It was 3:33
p.m.
In twenty-seven minutes, more or less, Ironfingers would be calling Ben Gaines, making arrangements to trade two aluminum suitcases full of cocaine for… for what? Probably for a huge amount of money. Whatever he exchanged it for, Musket would have to name a time and a place. Chee wished fervently that he had the clips and the earphones, or whatever it took to eavesdrop on a telephone call.

"Could we tell the guy at the switchboard that when the call came, Gaines would be in your room? Have him put it through your telephone?"

"Wouldn't work," Miss Pauling said.

Chee had seen it wouldn't work as soon as he'd said it. "Not unless I could imitate Gaines's voice."

Miss Pauling shook her head. "You couldn't," she said.

"I guess not," Chee said. He thought.

"What are you thinking about? Anything helpful?"

"No," Chee said. "I was thinking it would be good if we could get in the back of that telephone switchboard and somehow do some splicing with the wires." He shrugged, dismissing the thought.

"No," Miss Pauling said. "I think it's a GTE board. It takes tools."

Chee looked at her, surprised. "GTE board?"

"I think so. It looked like the one we had at the high school."

"You know something about switchboards?"

"I used to operate one. For about a year. Along with filing, a lot of other things."

"You could operate this one?"

"Anybody can operate a switchboard," she said. "If you're smart enough to dress yourself." She laughed. "It's certainly not skilled labor. Three minutes of instructions and…" She let it trail off.

"And the switchboard operator can listen in on the calls?"

"Sure," she said, frowning at him. "But they're not going to let…"

"How much time do we have?" Chee said. "I'll cause some sort of distraction to get that Hopi away from there, and you handle the call."

Later, several possibilities occurred to Chee that were much better than starting a fire. Less flamboyant, less risky, and the same effect. But at the moment he only had about twenty minutes. The only creative thought he had was fire.

He handed Miss Pauling a ten-dollar bill. "Pay the check," he said. "Be near the switchboard. Two or three minutes before four, I come running in and get the clerk out of there."

The raw material he needed was just where he remembered seeing it. A great pile of tumble-weeds had drifted into a corner behind the cultural center museum. Chee inspected the pile apprehensively. It was still a little damp from the previous night's shower but—being tumble-weed—it would burn with a furious red heat, damp or not. And the pile was slightly bigger than he remembered. Chee glanced around nervously. The weeds were piled into the junction of two of the cement-block walls which formed the back of the museum, conveniently out of sight. He hoped no one had seen him. He imagined the headline.
navajo cop nailed for hopi arson. officer charged with torching cultural center.
He imagined trying to explain this to Captain Largo. But there wasn't time to think of it. A quick look around, and he struck a match. He held it low under the prickly gray mass of weed stems. The tumbleweed, which always burned at a flash, merely caught, winked out, smoldered, caught again, smoldered, caught again, smoldered. Chee lit another match, tried a drier spot, looked nervously at his watch. Less than six minutes. The tumbleweed caught; flame flared through it, producing a sudden heat and smoggy white smoke. Chee stepped back and fanned it furiously with his uniform hat. (If anyone is watching this, he thought, I'll never get out of jail.) The fire was crackling now, producing the chain reaction of heat. Hat in hand, Chee sprinted for the motel office.

He ran through the door, up to the desk. The clerk, a young man, was talking to an older Hopi woman.

"Hate to interrupt," he said, "but something's burning out there!"

The Hopis looked at him politely.

"Burning?" the clerk said.

"Burning," Chee said loudly. "There's smoke coming over the roof. I think the building's burning."

"Burning!" the Hopi shouted. He came around the desk at a run. Miss Pauling was standing at the coffee shop entrance, watching tensely.

The fire was eating furiously into the tumble-weeds when they rounded the corner. The clerk took it in at a glance.

"Try to pull it away from the wall," he shouted at Chee. "I'll get water."

Chee looked at his watch. Three minutes to four. Had he started it too early? He stomped at the weeds with his boots, kicking a section of the unburned pile aside to retard the spread. And then the Hopi was back, bringing two buckets of water and two other men. The tumbleweeds now were burning with the furious resinous heat common of desert plants. Chee fought fire with a will now, inhaling a lungful of acrid smoke, coughing, eyes watering. In what seemed like just a minute, it was over. The clerk was throwing a last bucketful of water over the last smoking holdout. One of the helpers was examining places where embers had produced burn holes in his jeans. Chee rubbed watering eyes.

"I wonder what could have started it," Chee said. "You wouldn't think that stuff would burn like that after that rain."

"Goddamn tumbleweeds," the Hopi said. "I wonder what did start it." He was looking at Chee. Chee thought he detected a trace of suspicion.

"Maybe a cigaret," he said. He started poking through the blackened remains with his foot. The fire had lasted a little longer than it seemed. It was four minutes after four.

"Blackened up the wall," the Hopi said, inspecting it. "Have to be repainted." He turned to walk back to the motel office.

"Somebody ought to check the roof," Chee said. "The flames were going up over the parapet."

The Hopi stopped and looked toward the flat roof. His expression was skeptical.

"No smoke," he said. "It's all right. That roof would still be damp."

"I thought I saw smoke," Chee said. "Be hell if that tarred roof caught on fire. Is there a way to get up there?"

"I guess I better check," the clerk said. He headed off in the other direction at a fast walk.

To get a ladder, Chee guessed. He hoped the ladder was a long ways off.

Miss Pauling was coming, hurried and nervous, from behind the counter when Chee pushed through the door. Her face was white. She looked flustered.

Chee rushed her outside to his patrol car. The clerk was hurrying across the patio, carrying an aluminum ladder.

"Call come?"

She nodded, still speechless.

"Anybody see you?"

"Just a couple of customers," she said. "They wanted to pay their lunch tickets. I told them to just leave the money on the counter. Was that all right?"

"All right with me," Chee said. He held the car door for her, let himself in on the driver's side. Neither of them said anything until he pulled out of the parking lot and was on the highway.

Then Miss Pauling laughed. "Isn't that funny," she said. "I haven't been so terrified since I was a girl."

"It is funny," Chee said. "I'm still nervous."

Miss Pauling laughed again. "I think you're terrified of how embarrassed you're going to be. What are you going to say if that man comes back and there you are behind his counter playing switchboard operator?"

"Exactly," Chee said. "What are you going to say if he says, 'Hey, there, what are you doing burning down my cultural center?'"

Miss Pauling got her nerves under control. "But the call did come through," she said.

"It must have been short," Chee said.

"Thank God," she said fervently.

"What'd you learn?"

"It was a man," Miss Pauling said. "He asked for Gaines, and Gaines answered the phone on the first ring, and the man asked him if he wanted the suitcases back, and—"

"He said suitcases?"

"Suitcases," Miss Pauling confirmed. "And Gaines said yes, they did, and the man said that could be arranged. And then he said it would cost five hundred thousand dollars, and they would have to be in tens and twenties and not in consecutive order, in two briefcases, and he said they would have to be delivered by The Boss himself. And Gaines said that would be a problem, and the man said either The Boss or no deal, and Gaines said it would take some time. He said it would take at least twenty-four hours. And the man said they would have more than that. He said the trade would be made at nine
p.m.
two nights after tonight."

"Friday night," Chee said.

"Friday night," Miss Pauling agreed. "Then the man said to be ready for nine
p.m.
Friday night, and he hung up."

"That's all of it?"

"Oh, the man said he'd be back in touch to tell Gaines where they'd meet. And
then
he hung up."

"But he didn't name the place?"

"He didn't."

"Say anything else?"

"That's the substance of it."

"He explain why the boss had to deliver the money?"

"He said he didn't trust anybody else. He said if the boss was there himself, nobody would risk trying anything funny."

"Any names mentioned?"

"Oh, yes," Miss Pauling said. "The man called Gaines Gaines and once Gaines said something like Palanzer.' He said something like: 'I don't see why you're doing this, Palanzer. You would have made almost that much.' That was after the man—Palanzer, I guess—said he wanted the five hundred thousand."

"What did the man say to that?"

"He just laughed. Or it sounded like a laugh. His voice sounded muffled all through the conversation—like he was talking with something in his mouth."

"Or with something over his mouth." Chee paused. "He specified nine
p.m.
?"

Miss Pauling nodded. "He said, 'Exactly nine
p.m.
'"

Chee pulled off the asphalt, made a backing turn, and headed back toward the motel. He smelled of smoke.

"Well," Miss Pauling said. "Now we know who has it, and when they're going to make the switch."

"But not where," Chee said. Why the muffled voice, he was asking himself. Because the caller would have been good old Ironfingers, and because Ironfingers would want Gaines to believe the caller was Palanzer. Joseph Musket, despite his years of living among whites, would not have lost his breathy Navajo pronunciation.

"How do we find out where?"

"That's going to take some thinking," Chee said.