'Because I knocked you around?'
West was on his feet now, blood running down his cheek. Chee delayed his answer a moment. He wanted to make sure West was listening to it.
'Because of the way you set up West's boy in the penitentiary. You take him away from the prison, and somehow or other you get him to talk, and then you put him back with the regular population. If you'd have put him in a segregation cell to keep him safe, then the organization would have known he'd talked. They'd have called off the delivery.'
'That's fairly clear thinking,' Johnson said. He laughed again. 'You know for sure the son of a bitch is going to have to absolutely guarantee everybody that he didn't say one damn word.'
In the yellow light of the flash, West's face was an immobile mask staring at Johnson.
'And you know for sure they're not going to let him stay alive, not with you maybe coming back to talk to him again,' Chee said.
'I can't think of any reason to keep you around,' Johnson said. 'Can you think of one?'
Chee couldn't. He could only guess that Johnson was stalling just a little so that the shot that killed Chee would be covered by thunder. When the next flash of lightning came, Johnson would wait a moment until the thunderclap started, and then he would shoot Chee.
'I can think of a reason to kill you,' Johnson said. 'West, here, he'll see me do it and then he'll know for sure that I won't hesitate to do it to him if he don't cooperate.'
'I can think of one reason not to kill me,' Chee said. 'I've got the cocaine.'
Johnson grinned.
There was a flicker of lightning. Chee found himself hurrying.
'It's in two suitcases. Aluminum suitcases.'
Johnson's grin faded.
'Now, how would I know that?' Chee asked him.
'You were out there when the plane crashed,' Johnson said. 'Maybe you saw West and Palanzer and that goddamn crooked Musket unloading it and hauling it away.'
'They didn't haul it away,' Chee said. 'West dug a hole in the sand behind that outcrop and put in the two suitcases and covered them over with sand and patted the sand down hard, and the next morning you federals walked all over the place and patted it down some more.'
'Well, now,' Johnson said.
'So I went out and took the jack handle out of my truck and did some poking around in the sand until I hit metal and then dug. Two aluminum suitcases. Big ones. Maybe thirty inches long. Heavy. Weight maybe seventy pounds each. And inside them, all these plastic packages. Pound or so each. How much would that much cocaine be worth?'
Johnson was grinning again, wolfishly. 'You saw it,' he said. 'It's absolutely pure. Best in the world. White as snow. Fifteen million dollars. Maybe twenty, scarce like it is this year.'
Lightning flashed. In a second it would thunder.
'So you've got a fifteen-million-dollar reason to keep me alive,' Chee said.
'Where is it?' Johnson asked. Thunder almost drowned out the question.
'I think we better talk business first,' Chee said.
'A little bit of larceny in everybody's heart,' Johnson said. 'Well, there's enough for everybody this time.' He grinned again. 'We'll take your car. Police radio might come in handy. If Mr. West here stirred up any trouble back there in the village, it'd be nice to know about it.'
'My car?' Chee said.
'Don't get cute,' Johnson said. 'I saw it. Parked right down the slope in all those bushes. Let's go.'
The rain was a downpour again now. The Navajos have terms for rain. The brief, noisy, violent thunderstorm is 'male rain.' The slower, enduring, soaking shower is 'female rain.' But they had no word for this kind of storm. They walked through a deafening wall of falling water, breathing water, almost blinded by water. Johnson walked behind him, West stumbling dazedly in front, the beam of Johnson's flash illuminating only sheets of rain.
They stopped beside Chee's car.
'Get out your keys,' Johnson said.
'Can't,' Chee said. He had to shout over the pounding of rain on the car roof.
'Try,' Johnson said. He had the pistol pointed at Chee's chest. 'Try hard. Strain yourself. Otherwise I whack you on the head and get 'em out myself.'
Chee strained. Twisting hips and shoulders, he managed to hook his trigger finger into his pants pocket. Then he pulled his trousers around an inch or two. He managed to fish out the key ring.
'Drop it and back off,' Johnson said. He picked up the keys.
Chee became aware of a second sound, even louder than the pounding of the rain. Polacca Wash had turned into a torrent. This cloudburst had been developing over Black Mesa for an hour, moving slowly. Behind it and under it, millions of tons of water were draining off the mesa down dozens of smaller washes, scores of arroyos, ten thousand little drainage ways—all converging on Polacca, and Wepo, sending walls of water roaring southwestward to pour into the Little Colorado River. The roaring Chee could hear was the sound of brushwood and dislodged boulders rumbling down Polacca under the force of the flood. In two hours, there wouldn't be a bridge, or a culvert, or an uncut vehicle crossing between the Hopi Mesa and the river canyon.
