'That would be the deputy warden,' Armijo said. 'I'll call him.'
While Armijo dialed, the sound of the burr head's typewriter resumed. Typing makes it hard for him to listen, Chee thought.
The deputy warden for security wanted to talk to Chee directly, and then he wanted to know what Chee was doing in the prison, and why, specifically, he wanted to talk to a friend of West.
'Nothing to do with anything in here,' Chee assured him. 'We've got an unsolved burglary on the reservation, and we're looking for a parole violator named Musket. Musket got sent up with West. They were friends from way back. Did an armed robbery or so together before going into drugs. I just need to know if West and Musket stayed friendly in prison. Things like that.'
The deputy warden said nothing for several seconds. Then he told Chee to wait, he'd call back.
Chee waited almost an hour. Burr head typed, eyeing him now and then. The black man with the bandaged neck finished emptying the Out basket into the proper accordion files and left. Armijo had explained that he was working on his annual report, which was late. He used a pocket calculator, comparing figures and compiling some sort of list. Chee sat in his gray metal chair, thinking now and then, and now and then listening to the sounds that came through the door beside his right ear. Footsteps, approaching and receding, an occasional distant metallic sound, once an echoing clang, once a whistle, shrill and brief. Never a voice, never a spoken word. Why did Johnson visit Thomas Rodney West? Had West heard of the impending drug delivery near Burnt Water and summoned the agent to trade information for a parole recommendation? West must have been connected to the group involved in the transfer. Why else had Jansen visited him twice? Johnson could have known that. Probably would have. Almost certainly did. Obviously did. Had he visited, hoping to pry out of West some information about the impending shipment? That seemed the best bet.
The sound now was the telephone shrilling. Armijo spoke into it, listened. Handed it to Chee.
'Fellow will talk to you,' the deputy warden said. 'Name's Archer. Good friend of West. Very good.' The deputy warden laughed. 'If you know what I mean.'
'Girl friend?' Chee asked.
'I think it was boy friend,' the D.W. said.
The same middle-aged Chicano appeared, to guide Chee, taking him down a long, blank corridor. The two convicts they met on the journey walked against the walls, giving them the middle of the aisle. The interview room was windowless and the fluorescent tubes which lit it gave its dirty white paint a grayish tinge. The man named Archer was big, perhaps forty years old, with the body of a man who worked on the weights. His nose had been broken a long time ago and broken again more recently and the scars from one of the breaks glistened white against the pallor of his skin. Archer was sitting behind the counter that split the small room, looking curiously at Chee through a pane of glass. A guard leaned against the wall behind him, smoking.
'My name's Jim Chee,' Chee said to Archer. 'I know Tom West's father. I need a little information. Just a little.'
'This can be a short conversation,' Archer said. 'I wasn't in the yard when it happened. I don't know a damned thing.'
'That's not what I'm asking about,' Chee said. 'I want to know why he wanted to talk to T. L. Johnson.'
Archer looked blank.
'Why he wanted to talk to Johnson the narcotics agent.'
Archer's face flushed. 'T. L. Johnson,' he said slowly, memorizing the name. 'Was that who it was? Tom didn't want to talk to that son of a bitch. He didn't know nothing to tell him. He was scared to death of it.' Archer snorted. 'For a damn good reason. The son of a bitch set him up.'
'It wasn't West's idea, then?'
'Hell, no, it wasn't. Nobody in here is going to volunteer to talk to a narc. Not in here, they're not. The bastard set him up. You know what he did? He arranged to take him out of here. Right down the front walk, right out the front gate, right into his car, and drive away. Just drove down toward Cerrillos, out of sight of the prison, and sat there. No way for West to prove he hadn't snitched.' Archer glared at Chee, his pallid face still flushed. 'Dirty son of a bitch,' he said.
'How do you know about this?' Chee asked.
'When they brought him back, Tom told me.' Archer shook his head. 'He was mad and he was scared. He said the narc wanted to know about when a shipment was going to come in, and where, and all about it, and when Tom told him he didn't know nothing,.Johnson laughed at him and just parked out there and said he was going to stay parked until all the cons figured he had time to spill his guts.'
'Scared,' Chee asked. 'Was he? He didn't ask to get put in segregation, where he'd be safe. Or if he did ask, it wasn't in the files.'
'He talked about it,' Archer said. 'But once you go in there you got to stay. That's rat country. Everybody in there is a snitch. You go in there you can't come out.'
'So he decided to risk it?'
'Yeah,' Archer said. 'He had a lot of respect in here. So do I.' He looked at Chee, his expression strained. 'It seemed like we could risk it,' he said. 'It seemed like a good gamble.'
Archer had argued for the gamble, Chee guessed. Now he wanted Chee to understand it.
'Can you tell me anything about who killed him, or why, or anything?'
Archer's face assumed the same expression Chee had always noticed in official police identification photographs.
'I don't have no ideas about that,' he said. 'Look, I've got to get out of here. Work to do.'
'One more thing,' Chee said. 'He got sent up here with a man named Joseph Musket. Friends from way back. Did they stay friends?'
'Musket's out,' Archer said. 'Paroled.'
