'So you see, I haven't got much time to work with you,' Johnson said. He was smiling. 'You've got two sets of hard people stirred up. They're going to make the connection right away and they're going to be coming after you. They're going to twist that dope out of you and if you can't deliver it, they'll just keep twisting.'
Chee could think of nothing helpful to say to that.
'The only way to go is the easy way,' Johnson said. 'You tell me where you and Palanzer put it. I find it. Nobody is any wiser. Any other way we handle it, you're dead. Or if you're lucky you get ten to twenty in the federal pen. And with those two people killed, you wouldn't last long in federal pen.'
'I don't know where it is,' Chee said. 'I'm not even sure what it is.'
Johnson looked at him, mildly and without comment. A smell of cologne seeped into Chee's nostrils. Collins had broken his aftershave lotion. 'What did Gaines want?' Johnson said. He pulled Gaines's card out of his shirt pocket and looked at it. It had been in Chee's billfold.
'He wanted to know what happened to the car. The one I heard driving off.'
'How'd he know about that?'
'He read my report. At the station. He told 'em he was the pilot's lawyer.'
'Why'd he give you the card?'
'He wanted me to find the car for him. I said I'd let him know.'
'Can you find it?'
'I don't see how,' Chee said. 'Hell, it's probably in Chicago by now, or Denver, or God knows where. Why would it stay around? From what I hear, you're circulating the picture of the guy that's supposed to be driving it. This Palanzer. Why would he stick around?'
'I'll ask the questions,' Johnson said.
'But don't you think Palanzer got off with the stuff? Why else are you looking for him?'
'Maybe Palanzer got it and maybe he didn't, and maybe he had a lot of help if he did. Like a Navajo tribal cop who knows this country and knows a hole they can hide it in until things cool off some.'
'But—'
'Shut up,' Johnson said. 'This is wasting time. I'll tell you what we're going to do. We're going to wait just a little while. Give you some time to think it over. I figure you've got a day or two before the people who own that dope decide to come after you. You give some thought to what they'll do to you and then you get in touch with me and we'll deal.'
'One thing,' Collins said from just behind Chee. 'It damn sure ain't hid in here.'
'But don't wait too long,' Johnson said. 'You haven't got much time.'
Chapter Twelve
When captain largo worried, his round, bland face resolved itself into a pattern of little wrinkles—something like a brown honeydew melon too long off the vine. Largo was worried now. He sat ramrod straight behind his desk, an unusual position for the captain's plump body, and listened intently to what Jim Chee was saying. What Chee was saying was angry and directly to the point, and when he finished saying it, Largo got up from his chair and walked over to the window and looked out at the sunny morning.
'They pull a gun on you?' he asked.
'Right.'
'Hit you? That right?'
'Right,' Chee said.
'When they took off the cuffs, they told you that if you filed a complaint, their story would be you invited them in, invited them to search, they didn't lay a hand on you. That right?'
'That's it,' Chee said.
Largo looked out the window some more. Chee waited. From where he stood he could see through the glass past the captain's broad back. He could see the expanse of bunch grass, bare earth, rocks, scattered cactus, which separated the police building from the straggling row of old buildings called Tuba City. The sky had the dusty look of a droughty summer. Far across the field a cloud of blue smoke emerged from the sheet-metal garage of the Navajo Road Department—a diesel engine being test run. Largo seemed to be watching the smoke.
'Two days, they said, before the people who owned the dope figured you had it. Right?'
'That's what Johnson said,' Chee agreed.
'He sound like he was guessing, or like he knew?' Largo was still looking out the window, his face away from Chee.
'Of course he was guessing,' Chee said. 'How would he know?'
Largo came back and sat at the desk again. He fiddled with whatever odds and ends he kept in the top drawer.
'Here's what I want you to do,' he said. 'Write all this down and sign it, and date it, and give it to me. Then you take some time off. You got two days coming. Take a whole week. Get the hell away from here for a while.'
'Write it down? What good will that do?'
'Good to have it,' Largo said. 'Just in case.'
'Shit,' Chee said.
