the BIA nor by the Albuquerque FBI in the Sayesva homicide. “Stay away from Tano” was the lieutenant’s final instruction.
And then there was the matter of the Councilman Chester bribery business. He had rushed off without leaving Leaphorn any explanation of that tape he’d left in the tape player on the lieutenant’s desk. Not that much explanation would be needed. It would be clear enough to Leaphorn. Someone had tapped Jimmy Chester’s telephone – or maybe Ed Zeck’s. Ed Zeck was an old-time Indian Country lawyer – a regular lobbyist at tribal council meetings. So you had a tape of Chester dunning Zeck for his bribe money. A very businesslike arrangement, so it sounded. It sounded as if Chester was accumulating interest on his twenty-grand payoff. And apparently Chester had borrowed it from the bank to be paid back when Zeck delivered the money. Sort of an advance, or maybe a way to launder it. Such high finance, the way banks operated, was far, far from Chee’s zone of expertise.
The Farmington police, it turned out, were way ahead of Chee. Chee was referred to Sergeant Eddie Bell.
“We handled that right after it happened,” Bell said. “There’re seven places in the yellow pages that do printing, and all but two will do bumper stickers if you want a thousand or so, and three of ’em would run off a single if you were willing to pay the preparation cost, and not a damn one of them remembered doing an ernie is the greatest job.”
“Well, hell,” Chee said. “You’d think somebody would remember an odd one like that. It would have to be one of those places that does singles, I’d think.” This concept was new to Chee. He had admired thousands of bumper stickers, from assurances that God loved him, to recommendations for saving the planet, to obscenities, to dire warnings about following too closely. Declarations of red power, and even one that simply said bumper sticker. But he’d never given a thought to where they came from.
“Do they do that?” he asked Bell. “You just walk in and tell them what you want and they print you one?”
“Sure,” Bell said. “Quikprint right down in the next block will run one off for you in five minutes. But it’s pretty expensive that way. Not like so much a thousand. So they don’t do many, and everyone we talked to says they thought they’d remember that ernie is the greatest. It’s sort of weird.”
“I guess he must have got it printed somewhere else,” Chee said.
Sergeant Bell’s expression said he thought that was a statement too obvious to need saying.
“We asked for checks of printers at Albuquerque, and Gallup, and Flagstaff, and Phoenix. So far they all came up blank. But you know how that is.”
“Yeah,” Chee said. People tended to be way too busy to do other people’s work. Or to do it well. He was disappointed and Bell saw it.
“Look. If you’re going to keep working on this sticker business, be careful with it. It’s an easy one to spot. If he finds out we’re watching for it, he’ll scrape it off. And if he doesn’t scrape it off, we’re going to have him sooner or later.”
Now Bell also had said something too obvious to need saying. They were even.
And Chee was back to square one. The only thing he had that probably hadn’t been worked by the state cops, or the Farmington police, or the San Juan County Sheriff, was the smell of onions. The man must have smelled strongly – not just onion breath. And it was, as Ellie had said, too early to be eating hamburgers. She’d said it seemed like the odor came from his clothing, and it must have been powerful.
Chee drove down to the Garden Spot Produce Company on West Main, checked the vehicles parked there without scoring a green pickup with an ernie is the greatest sticker, and parked himself. He’d scanned through the typed copy of his man’s confession which Bell had given him. Now he got out the taped copy he’d gotten at KNDN and stuck it in his player.
The voice was that of a young woman, talking in halting Navajo. Chee frowned. They’d given him the wrong tape. The woman was reporting the death of her maternal aunt, obviously reading something that had been written for her in English and stumbling over the translation. The family was getting together at the home of the deceased in Mexican Water to talk about what to do with her horses, and her grazing lease, and other property, and there was going to be a funeral service at the Assembly of God Mission at Kayenta. The halting voice told Chee that the woman was born to the Streams Come Together People and born for the Towering House Clan. But, Chee thought, whatever her clans, she had gone onto the Jesus Road. Before he could ponder that and whether it would affect the incest taboo, another voice came on.
“I tell the family of Hosteen Todachene that I am sorry. I heard the truck hit something, but I was drunk. I went back and I didn’t see anything. I don’t drink hardly ever so when I did drink that night I got drunk. I would have helped him if I knew he was there. Now I am sorry. I will send money every two weeks to help make up for the help he gave you. I want you to know I am sorry.” End of tape. Chee rewound it and played it again. The words rushed out – a man tense with emotion and, understandably, in a hurry. He played it again. The speech sounded memorized, as if the man had written it out. He must have thought about it a lot. In this third time through Chee was impressed with the emotion. The man sounded as if he were holding back tears.
He switched off the tape, turned on the radio, punched the AM button. At the moment, KNDN was broadcasting a singer asking, “Why did you leave me, Lucille, with three little children and a crop in the field.” He turned the volume down a notch, and sat trying to visualize the man. Medium-sized, middle-aged, Ellie had said, wearing jeans and a jean jacket and a baseball cap with a long bill bent up in the middle like somebody had sat on it. On the tape he sounded like a childhood Navajo speaker – probably not boarding school. A lot of middle-aged Navajos had a limited vocabulary in their language because in those days the BIA wouldn’t let them speak it in school and that was the age period when you grow out of your childhood vocabulary. This man spoke it well. He knew the verbs to convert an English-language situation into fluent Navajo. Chee switched off the radio and went into the produce store. The clerk pointed him to a telephone. He called the Farmington Police number. Yes, Sergeant Bell was in.
“You know in that broadcast, the man said he was going to send money to the Todachene family,” Chee said. “Do you know if he’s done it?”
“He did,” Bell said. “At least somebody did.” He laughed. “Unfortunately, he forgot to put his return address on the envelope.”
“Was it mailed around here?”
“Farmington postmark,” Bell said. “Apparently he mailed it two days after he ran over the guy.”
“How much?”
“Six twenties, two tens, and a five,” Bell said. “Wish he’d sent a check.”
“That’d be a hundred and forty-five dollars,” Chee said. “Does that mean anything to you? The amount?”
“Not a damn thing,” Bell said. “At least he didn’t spend it getting drunk again.”
“Well,” Chee said, “thanks. If I learn anything I’ll let you know. But I haven’t got much hope.”
“Hey, by the way, did you hear it happened again? Down at your place this time?”
“What happened?”
“Somebody showed up at that open mike KNDN operates down at Kirtland. Down at the Navajo Tractor Company beside the highway. This guy walked in and broadcast a tape of one of your tribal councilmen talking about a bribe.”
Chee sucked in his breath. “Did what?”
“I didn’t hear it,” Bell said. “But we got a bunch of calls about it and somebody went down to see about it. They told him this guy walked into the dealership there and got in line with the people waiting to broadcast their announcements. The microphone’s in a little box on the wall in the lobby and you just wait your turn. He said, ‘What you are about to hear is telephone talk between tribal councilman so-and-so and such-and-such, the lobbyist for some company or other.’ And then he played this conversation. Held his little tape recorder up to the mike.”
“Be damned,” Chee said. “Who was it?”
“Who knows. People come in every day during the noon hour to make announcements and nobody paid much attention. It happened a lot like the last one at the station in Farmington.”
“Did you get a description?”
“Not much of one. White man. Maybe five-eight or -ten. Maybe forty or forty-five. Had a jacket on and a hat. Nothing on what he was driving, or how he got there. The manager said there’s always a line of Navajos coming in to use the mike during that period for making announcements. The people working there are selling tractors, farm
