put it on, stood up in his shorts.
'Get the hell out of here,' he said to Johnson.
'Not yet,' Johnson said. 'We're here on business.'
'We'll do any business we have over at the office,' Chee said. 'Get out.'
Collins was behind him now and it happened too quickly for Chee to ever know exactly how he did it. He found himself face down on the bunk, with his wrists twisted high behind his shoulders. He felt Johnson's hand pinning him while Collins snapped handcuffs on his wrists. It must have been something the two of them practiced, Chee thought.
They released him. Chee sat up on the bunk. His hands were cuffed behind him.
'We need to get something straight,' Johnson said. 'I'm the cop and you're the suspect. That Indian badge don't mean a damn thing to me.'
Chee said nothing.
'Keep on looking,' Johnson said to Collins. 'It's got to be bulky and there can't be many places it could hide in here. Make sure you don't miss any of them.'
'I haven't.' Collins said. But he moved into the kitchen area and began opening drawers.
'You had a little meeting yesterday with Gaines,' Johnson said. 'I want to know all about that.'
'Go screw yourself,' Chee said.
'You and Gaines arranged a little deal, I guess. He told you what they'd be willing to pay to buy their coke back. And he told you what would happen to you if you didn't cough it up. That about right?'
Chee said nothing. Collins was looking in the oven, checking under the sink. He poured a little detergent into his palm, examined it, and rinsed it off under the tap. 'I already looked everyplace once,' Collins said.
'Maybe we're not going to find that coke stashed here,' Johnson said. 'Maybe we're not going to find the money here either. It don't look like you were that stupid. But by God you're going to tell me where to find it.'
Johnson struck Chee across the face, a stinging, back-handed blow.
'The best way to do it would be unofficial,' Johnson said. 'You just tell me right now, and I forget where I heard it, and you can just go on being a Navajo cop. No going to jail. No nothing. We do a lot of unofficial business.' He grinned at Chee, a wolfish show of big, even white teeth in a sunburned red face. 'Get more work done that way.'
Chee's nose hurt. He felt a trickle of blood start from it, moving down his lip. His face stung and his eyes were watering. But the real effect of the blow was psychological. His mind seemed detached from all this, working at several levels. At one, it was trying to remember the last time anyone had struck him. He had been a boy when that happened, fighting with a cousin. At another level his intelligence considered what he should do, what he should say, why this was happening.
And at still another, he felt simple animal rage—an instinct to kill.
He and Johnson stared at each other, neither blinking. Collins finished in the kitchen and disappeared in the tiny bath. There was the noise of him taking something apart.
'Where is it?' Johnson asked. 'The plane had the stuff on it, and the people who came to get it haven't got it. We know that. We know who took it, and we know he had to have some help, and we know you were it. Where'd you take it?'
Chee tested the handcuffs behind him, hurting his wrists. The muscles in his left shoulder were cramping where Collins had strained it. 'You son of a bitch,' Chee said. 'You're crazy.'
Johnson slapped him again. Same backhand. Same place.
'You were out there,' Johnson said. 'We don't know how you got onto the deal, but that doesn't matter. We just want the stuff.'
Chee said nothing at all.
Johnson removed his pistol from its shoulder holster. It was a revolver with a short barrel. He jammed the barrel against Chee's forehead.
'You're going to tell me,' Johnson said. He cocked the pistol. 'Now.'
The metal of the gun barrel pressed into the skin, hard against the bone. 'If I knew where that stuff was, I'd tell you,' Chee said. He was ashamed of it, but it was the truth. Johnson seemed to read it in his face. He grunted, removed the pistol, lowered the hammer, and stuck the gun back in the holster.
'You know something,' Johnson said, as if to himself. He looked around at Collins, who had stopped his hunt to watch, and then stared at Chee again, thinking. 'When you know a little more, there's a smart way for you to handle it. Just see to it that I get the word. An anonymous note would do it. Or call me. That way, if you don't trust the dea not to hammer you, you'd know we couldn't prove you tried to steal the stuff. And I couldn't turn you in for killing Jerry Jansen.'
Chee had his mind working again. He remembered Jansen was the body left at the plane. But how much would Johnson tell him?
'Who's Jansen?' he asked.
Johnson laughed. 'Little late to ask,' he said. 'He's the brother of the big man himself, the one who put this all together. And the one killed on the airplane, he was big medicine, too. Relative of the people buying the shipment.'
'Pauling?'
'Pauling was nothing,' Johnson said. 'The taxi driver. You worry about the other one.'
There was the sound of breaking glass in the shower. Collins had dropped something.
