'Anything at Sityatki tonight?'
'Nothing much,' Cowboy said.
'But something?'
'Nothing for tourists,' Dashee said.
'What is it?'
'Well, it's something we call Astotokaya. It means Washing of the Hair. It's private. Sort of an initiation ceremony into the religious societies of the village.'
It didn't sound to Chee like the sort of thing that would be useful to West.
'Does it draw a big crowd? I think that's what we're looking for.'
Dashee laughed. 'Just the opposite—they close the roads. Nobody is supposed to come in. Everybody is supposed to stay indoors, not even look out the windows. People who live in houses that look out on the kivas, they move out. Nobody stirs except the people working on the initiation in the kivas and the young people getting initiated. And they don't come out until dawn.'
'Tell me about it,' Chee said. The disappointment was gone. He thought he knew, now, where West would set up his rendezvous.
Cowboy was reluctant. 'It's confidential,' he said. 'Some of that stuff we're not really supposed to talk about.'
'I think it might be important,' Chee said. 'A funny thing happened yesterday. I was at the cultural center, and the clerk got called away from the desk, and the telephone was ringing, so Miss Pauling went over there and worked the switchboard and—'
'I heard about that fire,' Dashee said. 'You start that fire?'
'Why would I start a fire?' Chee asked. 'What I'm trying to tell you is Miss Pauling overheard this guy telling Gaines that the people who owned the cocaine could buy it back for five hundred thousand dollars. He said they should have the money available in two briefcases by nine o'clock Friday night. And he said he'd be back in touch to say where the trade-off would be made.'
'How'd you know when to start the fire?' Dashee said. 'How'd you know when that call was coming? You son of a bitch, you almost burned down the cultural center.'
'The point is why hold off until nine o'clock Friday night? That's the question; and I think the answer is because they want to make the switch in a place where the buyers will figure there's going to be a bunch of curious people standing around watching, when actually it will be private.'
'Sityatki,' Cowboy said.
'Right. It makes sense.'
Long pause, while Cowboy thought about it. 'Not much,' he said. 'Why go to all that trouble if they're just going to swap money for cocaine?'
'Safety,' Chee said. 'They need to be someplace where the guys buying the dope back won't just shoot them and keep the money and everything.'
'No safer there than anyplace else,' Dashee argued.
Maybe it wasn't, Chee thought. But why else wait until nine Friday night? 'Well,' he said, 'I think the swap's going to be made in Sityatki, and if you'd tell me more about what goes on, maybe I'll know why.'
So Cowboy told him, reluctantly and haltingly enough so that Chee's pancakes and sausages were cold by the time he had prodded it all out, and it added nothing much. The crux of the matter was the village was sealed from darkness until dawn, people were supposed to remain in doors and not be looking out to spy on the spirits who visited the kivas during the night, and the place was periodically patrolled by priests of the kiva—but more ceremonially than seriously, Cowboy thought.
Chee took his time over breakfast, killing some of the minutes that had to pass before he could call Captain Largo at his office. Largo would be just a little bit late, and Chee wanted his call to be hanging there waiting for the captain when he walked in. Sometimes little psychological edges like that helped, and Chee was sure he'd need some.
'He's not in yet,' the girl on the switchboard reported.
'You're sure?' Chee asked. 'Usually he gets in about eight-oh-five.'
'Just a minute,' she amended. 'He's driving into the parking lot.'
Which was exactly how Chee had planned it.
'Largo,' Largo said.
'This is Chee. There's a couple of things I have to report.'
'On the telephone?'
'When I came in last night, there were two men waiting for me in my trailer. With the lights off. With a gun. One of them, anyway.'
'Last night?' Largo said.
'About ten, maybe.'
'And now you're reporting it?'
'I think one of them was Drug Enforcement. At least, I think I've seen him with Johnson. And if one was, I guess they both were. Anyway, I wasn't sure what to do, so I took off.'
'Any violence?'
