him, and on not missing his turns. The land had risen a little now out of the flatness of the city basin, and there were traces of desert visible in vacant lots, which became vacant blocks, which became entire vacant hillsides, eroded and dotted with cactus and the dry, prickly brush common to land where it rarely rains. The poor side of the city. Chee examined it curiously. He no longer had a sense of where he was in relation to his motel. But there, low on the southwestern horizon, hung the sun. And eastward over those dry ridges lay the desert. And behind him, somewhere beyond the thickening smog of the city, was the cold, blue Pacific. It was enough to know.
And now just ahead of him was the exit sign Shaw had told him to watch for. He angled the truck cautiously across the freeway lanes and down the exit ramp and rolled to a stop on the parking ramp of a Savemor service station. Here tumbleweeds grew through the broken asphalt. A paunchy, middle-aged man in bib overalls leaned against the cashier's booth, eyeing him placidly. Chee spread his Los Angeles street map across the steering wheel, making sure he was in the right place. The sign said Jaripa Street, which seemed correct. Now the job was to locate Jacaranda, which intersected somewhere and led to the address that Shaw had pried, finally, from Gorman's landlady. Watching Shaw work had been impressive.
Chee recalled the interview. Two interviews, to be correct, although the first one had been brief. He had rung her doorbell, and rung, and rung until finally she had appeared, staring at him wordlessly past the barely opened door. She had re-inspected his Navajo Tribal Police credentials, still with no sign they impressed her. No, she'd said, she hadn't seen anyone like Margaret Billy Sosi. And then Chee had told her that a witness had seen the girl here.
'They lied,' the woman had said, and closed the door firmly in Chee's face.
It had taken almost an hour for the dispatcher at lapd to locate Shaw, and maybe twenty minutes later Shaw had arrived—driving up alone in an unmarked white sedan. The second interview had gone much better.
They'd done this one inside, in the woman's cluttered office-sitting room, and Chee had learned something from the way Shaw had handled it.
'This man hasn't got any business here,' Shaw had said, pointing a thumb at Chee. 'He's an Indian policeman. Couldn't arrest anybody in LA. I don't care what you told him. You could tell him to go to hell. But now I'm here.'
Shaw fished out his identification and held it in front of the woman's face. 'You and I've done business before, Mrs. Day,' he said. 'You called me when this guy showed up asking about Gorman, just like I told you to. I appreciate that. Now I need to find this girl, Margaret Sosi. She was here yesterday. What'd she say to you?'
Chee was trying to read Mrs. Day's expression. It was closed. Hostile. Was it fearful? Call it tense, he thought.
'Trashy people are always showing up here, ringing my doorbell.' She glanced at Chee. 'You can't expect me to remember them.'
'I can,' Shaw said. 'I do expect it.' He stared at her, face hard. 'We're going to find the girl, and I'm going to ask her if she talked to you.'
Mrs. Day said nothing.
'If she did, then I'm going to get the fire marshal's boys interested in this place of yours. Wiring. Exits. Trash removal. You familiar with the fire code for rental property?'
Mrs. Day looked stubborn.
'When we find this girl, if she's got her throat cut, like maybe she will have from what we know now, and you haven't helped us, then that makes you an accessory to murder. I don't guess we could prove it, but we can get you downtown, and book you in, and then you have to deal with the bonding company, and get a lawyer hired, and show up for the grand jury, and—'
'She was looking for Gorman,' Mrs. Day said.
'We know that,' Shaw said. 'What did she say about him?'
'Nothing much. I told her Gorman wasn't here.'
'What else—' Shaw began, but the telephone cut him off.
Mrs. Day looked at Shaw. On the wall behind her, the telephone rang again.
Shaw nodded.
Mrs. Day said hello into the mouthpiece, listened, said no, said I'll call you back. 'Just a sec,' she said. She reached behind her and wrote a number on a calendar mounted to the wall beside the phone. 'I don't know. Maybe fifteen minutes,' she said, and hung up.
'What else did she say?' Shaw continued.
'She was trying to find some old man. I don't remember his name. Her grandfather. Wanted to know if the old man had come here looking for Gorman.'
'Had he?' Shaw asked.
'I never seen him if he did. Then she wanted to know if I had any other address for Gorman, and I gave her what I had and she went away.'
'What did you give her?'
'Next of kin,' Mrs. Day said. 'I make my renters fill out a little card for me.' She took a metal box from the desk, fingered through it, and handed Shaw a file card. 'Gives them the idea that if they steal everything you got a way at getting back at 'em.'
Shaw copied information into his notebook.
'Jacaranda Street? That right?'
Mrs. Day nodded.
'Never heard of it,' Shaw said. 'And the name's Bentwoman Tsossie? Could that be right?'
'What he said,' Mrs. Day said. 'Who knows about Indians?'
