Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 17] (4 page)

McGinnis frowned. Took another tiny sip. Looked up at Leaphorn.

“Oh,” McGinnis said. “That diamond.”

“The one you mentioned on the insurance claim report. You listed it as a ten-thousand-dollar diamond.”

“Oh, yeah,” McGinnis said, and took another sip of his bourbon.

“Did you get it back?”

“No.”

“Did you get your insurance money for it?”

McGinnis peered at Leaphorn, blinked his watery blue eyes, rubbed his hands across them, put down his glass, and sighed.

“I remember that time, years ago, you came in here trying to find a shaman. Margaret Cigaret, I believe it was—a Listener, as I recall her. And I told you who her clan was, and about a Kinaalda being held for one of the
little girls in her clan, and you was smart enough to know Old Woman Cigaret would likely be out where they was holding that ceremonial and we sort of got acquainted.”

Having finished that statement to remind Leaphorn of his good deed, McGinnis nodded, signaling Leaphorn that he could comment on his helpfulness without violating the polite Navajo ban against interrupting.

“I remember,” Leaphorn said. “You also told me you knew my grandfather. You claimed they used to call Hosteen Klee Horse Kicker. It made my mother mad at you when I told her that. She said only a liar would say something like that.”

“Boys shouldn’t tell their mothers such things. Insulting your grandfather,” McGinnis said, choosing to ignore the implication. “Anyway, that day it got to be more like two friends talking. You and me. Not like you was a lawman.” He peered at Leaphorn, quizzically.

Leaphorn nodded.

“You still thinking that way?”

Leaphorn considered that. “When Captain Pinto told me you died, that didn’t seem right to me. I didn’t want to believe it. Too many old friends are dying. I didn’t really think I could learn anything about that diamond out here. I just wanted to see if I could bring back some old memories about when I was really a policeman. Maybe it would help me get into harmony with living with so many of my friends gone.”

McGinnis picked up his glass, made a sort of semi-toasting gesture with it and took a sip, hoisted himself from the rocker, and shuffled off through the doorway into his bedroom.

Leaphorn sipped his coffee. His memory of the chemical
taste proved accurate. He put down the cup, grimaced, watched the dust float through the shaft of sunlight slanting through the window, remembering how this place (and his own life) had been when he’d been a young cop working out of Tuba City, learning the trade.

McGinnis emerged, lowered himself into the rocker, put the pouch on his lap, and looked at Leaphorn, expression stern.

“Now it’s time for you to tell me what kind of information you want to get from me.”

“Fair enough,” Leaphorn said. “You may have read about that robbery at Zuni a while back. It was in the papers. On TV. On the radio.”

“Fella killed one of them tourist-trap operators, wasn’t it?” McGinnis said. “One of those places where tourists buy all that Indian junk. Heard it on the radio. Fella got off with some money and a bunch of other stuff.”

“Right,” Leaphorn said. “Well, now they have a suspect in jail at Gallup. A Hopi who tried to pawn a diamond worth maybe twenty thousand and he wanted only twenty dollars in pawn. FBI thinks he must have gotten it in the robbery. But he claims a man gave it to him down in the Grand Canyon years ago. This Hopi’s name is Billy Tuve and he’s a cousin of Cowboy Dashee. You remember Cowboy?”

McGinnis nodded.

“Dashee says Tuve’s not guilty. Captain Pinto saw the reference to the diamond in that insurance stuff added to your burglary. Diamonds aren’t common out here. So I wondered if you knew anything useful.”

“Well, then,” McGinnis said. “That’s interesting. This
Tuve, he claims he got it from a man down in the bottom of Grand Canyon, did he?”

He hoisted himself out of the rocker, shuffled down the store’s aisle, and disappeared again through the doorway into the living quarters.

Leaphorn sat thinking his thoughts. How much the man had aged. How McGinnis and his store seemed to be dying together. He resumed his study of the dust particles drifting through a beam of light from the lowering sun.

McGinnis came down the aisle with a small pouch of what seemed to be deer skin hanging from his right hand. He reseated himself in the rocker, looked at Leaphorn.

“I’ll tell you a story. You decide if it helps any. Probably won’t.”

Leaphorn nodded.

“Years ago. Winter, I remember. One of the cold ones. Lots of snow. A fellow came in here, said his name was Reno, probably middle thirties, riding a horse and all bundled up. Wearing a felt hat tied on with a strip of blanket holding the brim down over his ears. He said he needed some food and to use my telephone. My line was down, so I told him he could get to one at that store at Bitter Springs, and if that one wasn’t working, he’d have to get all the way to Page. He got some stuff off the shelf and I heated up a can of pork and beans for him. Then he said he didn’t have any money but he would leave me his horse and saddle for some more food and for me giving him a ride into Page.”

McGinnis chuckled at the memory, located his Coca-Cola glass, poured a trickle of bourbon into it, took a sip, and shook his head.

“It was a little roan mare and pretty used up. Limping
on its back leg. Fairly good saddle, though. I put the horse in the barn with some hay, thinking I wasn’t going to make anything out of the deal, but if I didn’t take the horse, I’d probably be stuck with the cowboy, too. I asked him where he was coming from. And now we come to the funny part. He said he been down in the canyon with a bunch of hippies and got lost from that crowd and was trying to find a way out of there. Said he ran into an old Indian while he was trying to climb up a side canyon. The old man told him that slot he was going up was a dead end, and showed him how to get to a trail the horse could manage, and asked him if he had a good knife or a hatchet he’d be willing to part with. So Reno said he showed the fella his knife and said he’d take ten dollars for it. The Indian didn’t have any money but he offered a trade.”

Having said that, McGinnis took another sip, picked the leather pouch off his lap, and started trying to untie the thong that held it closed.

McGinnis looked up from his labor. “You’ve seen ’em like this afore,” he said.

“Looks like a pouch to hold his ceremonial pollen,” Leaphorn said. “Or carry the cornmeal to use for a blessing. But I don’t recognize that figure stitched into the leather. It looks a little like a baseball umpire with his chest protector. What kind of Indian was he? Hopi? Havasupai? Hualapai? Yuman? Could even be one of the Apache tribes. They all use medicine pouches.”

“This cowboy, this Reno, said he didn’t know much about Indians. But he said this old fellow talked a lot about Masaw, or however you pronounce that kachina. Anyway, the Hopis know about him, and I think some of
the Yuman people down in the canyon, too. And the Supai folks. Some of them call him Skeleton Man. Supposed to be the Guardian of the Underworld, and the spirit who greeted the first Hopis when they came up from the dark world they been living in. This spirit told them how to make their religious migrations and where to live when they finished doing that. And the big thing about him for the Hopis, this spirit taught them not to be afraid of death.”

McGinnis paused, took another sip.

“Getting hoarse,” he said. “That’s the most I’ve talked in a while. But anyway, he’s supposed to have let a bunch of Hopi elders look down into the underground and see where people who died were living comfortable and having a good time.”

McGinnis stopped, examined the whiskey level in his glass. “What was that you asked me about?”

“What was in the little pouch?”

“Well, it wasn’t pollen. There was nothing blessed in this medicine pouch,” McGinnis said. He poured the contents out into his palm.

A small round metal box emerged, worn-looking and with the legend
Truly Sweet
in red on its side. A snuff box, Leaphorn thought. Not much of that used on the reservation these days.

McGinnis twisted off the lid and extracted a clear blue-white stone, marble-sized but not marble shape. He held it out between thumb and forefinger, rotating it in a beam of sunlight. The sunlight flashed through it, touching off glittering bursts of light.

“When you pour your pollen out of your pouch,”
McGinnis said, “then you’re pouring out a blessing. That’s the symbol of regerminating life. Of everything good and healthy and natural. Pour this little bastard out and you got the symbol of greed. It’s the sign of what folks cheat and steal and kill for. White women like to wear them to show other folks how rich they are.”

He held it out in a beam of sunlight, admired it. “Pretty, ain’t it?”

“Ah,” Leaphorn said, and smiled. “Mr. McGinnis, you’re starting to sound like an old-fashioned traditional Navajo.”

“Not quite,” McGinnis said. “But remember, when that First Man spirit fella of yours, when he was talking about the witchcraft evil stuff he had in his medicine bundle, he called it ‘the way to make money.’ Always did think that was a good point we whites overlooked. I mean, when a fella had more stuff than he needed and was stacking more of it up with the people all around him hungry, that was a pretty good clue he had some of that greed sickness, and they collect these things to prove they’re better at being greedy than their friends.”

With that, McGinnis produced a creaky old man’s chuckle and put the diamond back into the tin and the tin into the medicine pouch.

“Somebody said money was the root of all evil,” McGinnis said. “Myself, I never did well enough here to get much of it.”

“How about the diamond? Sounds like you wanted to make that work for you.”

McGinnis reached out and dropped the pouch into Leaphorn’s hand, changing the subject. “Take another
look at it. Up close. It’s pretty, all right. But nothing to go to jail for.”

Leaphorn extracted the snuff can from the pouch, took out the diamond, and let the sunlight shine through it. He turned it, examined it.

“Seems to have been shaped to fit into some sort of necklace. A pendant. You just gave him some groceries for it and got you his horse, too? I’d say you struck a pretty hard bargain,” he said. “Sounds to me like you were trying to practice ‘the way to make money.’”

McGinnis looked defensive. “You’re making it sound worse than it was. My pickup was still running then. I gave him a ride into Page. Figured it was a fake, anyway. So did Reno.”

Leaphorn looked surprised. “Well, now. Is that right? Then how come you estimated it at ten thousand dollars when that burglar stole it?”

McGinnis laughed, peered at Leaphorn, raised his eyebrows. “Are we still having a friendly conversation here? Or are you back to being a cop?”

“Let’s keep it friendly.”

“Well, then. I told this young fella I wasn’t born yesterday and I knew all about those artificial diamonds. Zircons, I think they are. Did he really think I’d believe he was giving me a genuine diamond for a little food and a ride through the snowstorm? And he said, to tell the truth, he’d have been disappointed in me if I did. He said he always figured it was artificial.”

“You say he admitted it was a fake?”

McGinnis nodded. “Yeah. Reno said he figured that old fellow who gave it to him was either sort of crazy or a religious nut. Thought he might be trying to
organize some sort of cult to the Skeleton Man down there.”

“But you listed it as an expensive diamond in the burglary report. If I hadn’t known you so long, that would surprise me.”

“Well, after the burglary I got to thinking about it, and I thought maybe I was just getting too cynical about things. Probably it really was a real diamond.” McGinnis peered at Leaphorn, nodded. “Yes,” he said. “A real perfect stone, too.”

“What’s the rest of the story?” Leaphorn asked. “You found it again after you filed the burglary report? Or the burglar really took it but brought it back?”

“Take your pick,” McGinnis said. “The insurance company cut my claim way down, anyway.”

“How about an address for this Reno?”

McGinnis laughed. “I said, ‘Where you from, son?’ and he said, ‘Reno. That’s why they call me that.’”

Leaphorn examined the stone again. “I’ve seen zircon stones. This looks like a diamond.”

“I think it is,” McGinnis said. “This cowboy, or whatever he was, said, ‘How could an old Indian down in the canyon get one of those?’ Laughed at the idea.” He pointed to the pouch in Leaphorn’s hand.

“Take a look at that, Joe,” he said. “I guess that’s some sort of lizard stitched there into the leather. But I never saw one like it. And that fierce-looking insect on the other side—you reckon that’s got something to do with that fella’s religion?”

“I’ll show it to Louisa,” Leaphorn said. “She’s down in the canyon now collecting oral-history stuff from the Havasupai people down there.”

“Keep it, then,” McGinnis said. “You want to hear the story he told me?”

“I think that’s what I came for,” Leaphorn said. “Remember, Cowboy Dashee’s cousin claims he got his diamond from an old man down in the canyon.”

“I already told you some of this,” McGinnis said.

“I’d like to hear it again. See if you tell it the same.”

McGinnis nodded. “Maybe I left something out. Well, anyway, this Reno says it was raining and sleeting and he was leading his horse up one of those narrow slots runoff waters cut in the canyon cliffs, thinking maybe he could follow it all the way out to the surface. Up there a little ways he passed the mouth of one of those washes that drains into the canyon, and this old man was standing in it out of the weather. My cowboy rolls himself a cigarette, and one for the old man. The old man asks if he’s got a knife or a hatchet he’d be willing to swap for something. Reno shows him one of those big folding knives he was carrying in one of those belt holsters. The old man admires it. He goes back into his cave, and when he comes out again, he has a sort of fancy flat box. Looked like one a peddler might carry and it has a whole bunch of little snuff cans in it. He opens one of them and takes out a little gem and holds it out like he’s offering it to swap. Reno says no. The old man gets out a bigger one. Then Reno says he decided it might be worth as much as his old knife, and his girlfriend would go for that. So he makes the trade.”