then, Chee thought, there's Johnson of the dea, who wouldn't worry about a court order, and would probably have the equipment in his hip pocket. He wondered why Johnson wanted him to call. Whatever, it was a call he didn't intend to make.
Miss Pauling looked stricken. She worried her lower lip with her teeth.
'How about just listening at the wall?' Chee asked. 'Where do they put the telephones? Could you hear from one room to the next?'
Miss Pauling thought about it. 'I doubt it,' she said. 'Not even if he talked loud.'
Chee glanced at his watch. It was 3:33 p.m. In twenty-seven minutes, more or less, Ironfingers would be calling Ben Gaines, making arrangements to trade two aluminum suitcases full of cocaine for… for what? Probably for a huge amount of money. Whatever he exchanged it for, Musket would have to name a time and a place. Chee wished fervently that he had the clips and the earphones, or whatever it took to eavesdrop on a telephone call.
'Could we tell the guy at the switchboard that when the call came, Gaines would be in your room? Have him put it through your telephone?'
'Wouldn't work,' Miss Pauling said.
Chee had seen it wouldn't work as soon as he'd said it. 'Not unless I could imitate Gaines's voice.'
Miss Pauling shook her head. 'You couldn't,' she said.
'I guess not,' Chee said. He thought.
'What are you thinking about? Anything helpful?'
'No,' Chee said. 'I was thinking it would be good if we could get in the back of that telephone switchboard and somehow do some splicing with the wires.' He shrugged, dismissing the thought.
'No,' Miss Pauling said. 'I think it's a GTE board. It takes tools.'
Chee looked at her, surprised. 'GTE board?'
'I think so. It looked like the one we had at the high school.'
'You know something about switchboards?'
'I used to operate one. For about a year. Along with filing, a lot of other things.'
'You could operate this one?'
'Anybody can operate a switchboard,' she said. 'If you're smart enough to dress yourself.' She laughed. 'It's certainly not skilled labor. Three minutes of instructions and…' She let it trail off.
'And the switchboard operator can listen in on the calls?'
'Sure,' she said, frowning at him. 'But they're not going to let…'
'How much time do we have?' Chee said. 'I'll cause some sort of distraction to get that Hopi away from there, and you handle the call.'
Later, several possibilities occurred to Chee that were much better than starting a fire. Less flamboyant, less risky, and the same effect. But at the moment he only had about twenty minutes. The only creative thought he had was fire.
He handed Miss Pauling a ten-dollar bill. 'Pay the check,' he said. 'Be near the switchboard. Two or three minutes before four, I come running in and get the clerk out of there.'
The raw material he needed was just where he remembered seeing it. A great pile of tumble-weeds had drifted into a corner behind the cultural center museum. Chee inspected the pile apprehensively. It was still a little damp from the previous night's shower but—being tumble-weed—it would burn with a furious red heat, damp or not. And the pile was slightly bigger than he remembered. Chee glanced around nervously. The weeds were piled into the junction of two of the cement-block walls which formed the back of the museum, conveniently out of sight. He hoped no one had seen him. He imagined the headline. navajo cop nailed for hopi arson. officer charged with torching cultural center. He imagined trying to explain this to Captain Largo. But there wasn't time to think of it. A quick look around, and he struck a match. He held it low under the prickly gray mass of weed stems. The tumbleweed, which always burned at a flash, merely caught, winked out, smoldered, caught again, smoldered, caught again, smoldered. Chee lit another match, tried a drier spot, looked nervously at his watch. Less than six minutes. The tumbleweed caught; flame flared through it, producing a sudden heat and smoggy white smoke. Chee stepped back and fanned it furiously with his uniform hat. (If anyone is watching this, he thought, I'll never get out of jail.) The fire was crackling now, producing the chain reaction of heat. Hat in hand, Chee sprinted for the motel office.
He ran through the door, up to the desk. The clerk, a young man, was talking to an older Hopi woman.
'Hate to interrupt,' he said, 'but something's burning out there!'
The Hopis looked at him politely.
'Burning?' the clerk said.
'Burning,' Chee said loudly. 'There's smoke coming over the roof. I think the building's burning.'
'Burning!' the Hopi shouted. He came around the desk at a run. Miss Pauling was standing at the coffee shop entrance, watching tensely.
The fire was eating furiously into the tumble-weeds when they rounded the corner. The clerk took it in at a glance.
'Try to pull it away from the wall,' he shouted at Chee. 'I'll get water.'
Chee looked at his watch. Three minutes to four. Had he started it too early? He stomped at the weeds with his boots, kicking a section of the unburned pile aside to retard the spread. And then the Hopi was back, bringing two buckets of water and two other men. The tumbleweeds now were burning with the furious resinous heat common of desert plants. Chee fought fire with a will now, inhaling a lungful of acrid smoke, coughing, eyes watering. In
