“I just wanted to know if I could borrow a telephone,” Leaphorn said. He displayed his AT amp;T calling card. “I need to make some long-distance calls.”
“How about mine?” Haines said. He pointed to his desk and glanced at his watch. “I have a meeting in Gallup, so just make yourself comfortable.”
Comfortable it was. From its looks, Haines’s chair had been made about fifty years ago and heavily used. Its seat was well-padded leather. It swiveled, and tilted, and felt generally substantial. And the Haines telephone was one of those heavy black rotary-dial jobs made back when Ma Bell ruled.
Leaphorn used it to dial information and get the number of the Clark Gallery in Santa Fe. Desmond Clark was in, and wanted to know how Leaphorn was doing, and when they were going to go deer hunting again, and why didn’t Leaphorn retire, and how his health was holding up. Past all that old-friend exchange, they came to business.
“You know all about the Lincoln Canes, I guess,” Leaphorn said. “What would one be worth to a collector, and who would buy one? Fill me in on all that.”
“That’s easy,” Clark said. “Nobody would buy one. Everybody would know it was stolen property. You couldn’t display it. Or brag about it.”
“How about the Zuni War Gods?” Leaphorn said. “Somebody bought them, knowing they had to have been stolen. And the Hopis have had lots of stuff disappear and then it turns up in collections. And-”
“Okay,” Clark said. “I see what you mean. The underground market. Let me think about it a minute.”
“Think,” Leaphorn said, and waited.
“I believe ol’ Honest Abe sent nineteen of those out during the Civil War. Eighteen or nineteen. So they’re extremely rare, and they’re extremely unusual, and they look great. Ebony and silver, you know. And everybody’s favorite national hero had them made with his name on them. So if you were a Lincoln man, or even a Civil War buff, one would be worth a ton. I’d guess bidding would start at a hundred thousand. Maybe better. But a stolen one – I don’t know. I guess dealers who know the Lincoln trade could find a buyer. My field is Native American collectibles. I wouldn’t know.”
“But you think as high as a hundred thousand?”
“If it was a legitimate sale. Certified authenticity. All that. Say, for example, Taos Pueblo decided to sell its cane. All legal and everything. I’d say that would be low. You’d have the Indian buffs and the Lincoln buffs and the Civil War crazies all competing for it. But now you’ve got to tell me why you’re asking.”
“In a minute,” Leaphorn said. “Let’s say it wasn’t a public sale. Let’s say a dealer just approached a collector and said he had acquired one and wanted an offer.”
“The collector calls the cops.”
“Let’s say he was an unscrupulous collector.”
“He still calls the cops,” Clark said. “Even quicker. He figures it’s a sting. He’s being set up.”
“Okay,” Leaphorn said. “How about another possibility. Haven’t some of those canes disappeared? Down through the generations. Got lost or something? What if-”
“Aah,” Clark said. “That opens a new can of worms. Yes. I’m no authority on these Lincoln Canes. You could find out in the library. But I think some of the pueblos don’t have them any longer. Some of them went through pretty troubled times, you know. Like little Pojoaque, and Tesuque once, and Picuris.”
“So let’s say somebody who really knows about such things gets his hands on one of those lost canes. Could he sell it?”
Silence while Clark considered. Then he said, “I doubt it. Probably not.”
“Why not?”
“He wouldn’t have any documentation. There are a few dealers who could do it, I think. People with such reputations for absolute integrity that their word would be accepted.” Clark considered what he had just said for a moment. “Well,” he added, “I’d say their word plus a longish letter explaining the chronology of where the cane had been, whose hands it had passed through, and how it had come into their possession.”
“Who are these honorable dealers?” Leaphorn asked. “Besides you, I mean.”
Silence again. Leaphorn wondered if that had been taken as sarcasm. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” he said. “This is nothing to joke about.”
“Okay,” Clark said. “Maybe Clark Gallery, although we don’t do much of that big-money rare stuff. Let me think who else.” Silence again, and then he named an old but small gallery in Taos, another Santa Fe trader, one in Albuquerque, one in Gallup. “And a few independents, I think. I’d say Elliot Pew down in Tucson, and J. D. Regis in Albuquerque, and Asher Davis in Santa Fe, and maybe old man Fishbien, if he’s still in the business.” Silence again. “It’s a short list. And there’s a lot more honest dealers. But the thing is it takes years to get that word-is- his-bond reputation. And collectors, they’re paranoid. If one of them gets screwed, or thinks he did, he spreads the word in that very small world and right away you couldn’t sell a five-dollar gold piece for three dollars. You’re dead. Nobody’ll touch anything you’re selling.”
“How would I find out if anybody has one of those missing Lincoln Canes?”
“You probably can’t,” Clark said. “But if you want to try I’ll give you a name of a guy in Chicago. A guy named Bundy. He buys some little stuff from me but mostly he’s into Lincoln. For about forty years. He’d be as likely to know as anyone.”
The telephone in Chicago was answered by a man who switched Leaphorn to a woman. She identified herself as Mr. Bundy’s assistant, listened to his identification, took down Desmond Clark’s name, and put Leaphorn on hold.
“This is Bundy,” the next voice said. It was an old voice, with the sound of smoke damage and too much whiskey.
“I’m Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, Navajo Tribal Police,” Leaphorn said. “Mr. Clark thought you might be able to help me track down some information.”
“If I can.”
“You know about the Lincoln Canes given to-”
“Of course,” Bundy said. “What’s your question?”
“It concerns the one Mr. Lincoln sent to Pojoaque Pueblo. Have you ever heard whether it has turned up in any collection, any museum?”
Silence. Then a hoarse, hooting laughter. “Excuse me,” Bundy said. “I’ll be damned.”
“You’ve heard something?” Leaphorn asked.
“I thought it was bullshit,” Bundy said. “Just a rumor I heard last summer.” He laughed again. “We have a little meeting, we Lincoln people. Annual get-together. Have a speaker in from one of the history departments, compare notes. One of my friends there said he’d heard that a fellow, Florida fellow I believe it was, down in Miami, had bought the Pojoaque cane. Said it had turned up somewhere out in the West. I didn’t believe it.”
“Do you know the man’s name?”
“No. I guess I could try to find out, but it’s probably going to take a day or two. What’s this about? Is it important?”
“It’s about a murder,” Leaphorn said, and gave Mr. Bundy his home telephone number.
Then he sat, and rocked back in Father Haines’s swivel chair, thinking about it. How about Asher Davis? he thought. Perhaps Asher Davis had killed Dorsey. He put together a scenario that would explain how he might have been motivated to do it.
But that left two big questions. Could there possibly have been two killers with separate motivations – making the link of the Lincoln Cane irrelevant? If so, who had killed that koshare? And why? But that was more than two questions. And there was another one. How could he find a single shred of evidence to connect Davis to the Dorsey homicide?
Chapter 23
THEIR HOUSE had never seemed emptier. Leaphorn had walked into the kitchen intending to put something together for his supper. Perhaps he would boil some water in the coffeepot and open one of those little sacks of dried soup. But as he walked across the linoleum tile, he became aware of the sound of his footsteps. That hadn’t
