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IT WAS RAINING IN NEW YORK. L. G. Marcy, the director of public affairs to whom Joe Leaphorn was referred, proved to be a slender, stylish woman with gray hair, and eyes as blue as blade steel. On drier days, the expanse of glass behind her desk looked out upon the rooftops of mid-town Manhattan. She examined Leaphorn's card, turned it over to see if the back offered more information, and then glanced up at him.
'You want to see the documentation on an artifact,' she said. 'Is that correct?' She glanced down at the open catalog Leaphorn had handed her.
'That's all. Just this Anasazi pot,' Leaphorn said. 'We need to know the site it came from.'
'I can assure you it was legal,' Ms. Marcy said. 'We do not deal in pots collected in violation of the Antiquities Preservation Act.'
'I'm sure that's true,' said Leaphorn, who was equally sure no sane pot hunter would ever certify that he had taken a pot illegally. 'We presume the pot came from private land. We simply need to know which private land. Whose ranch.'
'Unfortunately, that pot sold. All pots went in that auction. So we don't have the documentation. The documentation went to the buyer. Along with the pot,' L. G. Marcy said. She smiled, closed the catalog, handed it to Leaphorn. 'Sorry,' she said.
'Who was the buyer?'
'We have a problem there,' she said. 'It is Nelson's policy to cooperate with the police. It is also Nelson's policy to respect the confidence of our customers. We never tell anyone the identity of buyers unless we have their advance clearance to do so.' She leaned across the desk to return Leaphorn's card. 'That rarely happens,' she said. 'Usually, none of the parties concerned wants publicity. They value privacy. On rare occasions, the object involved is so important that publicity is inevitable. But rarely. And in this case, the object is not the sort that attracts the news media.'
Leaphorn put the card in the pocket of his uniform shirt. The shirt was damp from the rain Leaphorn had walked through from his hotel toward this office building before ducking for shelter into a drugstore. To his surprise, the store sold umbrellas. Leaphorn had bought one, the first he'd ever owned, and continued his journey under it -- tremendously self-conscious -- thinking he would own the only umbrella in Window Rock, and perhaps the only umbrella on the reservation, if not in all of Arizona. He was conscious of it now, lying wetly across his lap, while he waited silently for L. G. Marcy to add to her statement. Leaphorn had learned early in his career that this Navajo politeness often clashed with white abhorrence for conversational silences. Sometimes the resulting uneasiness caused belagana witnesses to blurt out more than they intended to say. While he waited, he noticed the prints on the wall. All, if Leaphorn could judge, done by female artists. The same for the small abstract sculpture on the Marcy desk. The silence stretched. It wasn't going to work with this belagana.
It didn't.
The pause caused L. G. Marcy's smile to become slightly bent. Nothing more. She out-waited him. About his own age, Leaphorn thought, but she looked like a woman in her mid-thirties.
Leaphorn stirred. Moved the umbrella off his lap. 'I believe the FBI notified your company that we are investigating two homicides,' he said. 'This particular pot seems to figure into it. Your client won't be embarrassed. Not in any way. We simplya?S'
'I'm not sure the FBI exactly notified us of anything,' Ms. Marcy said. 'An FBI agent called froma?S' She examined a notebook. 'a?S Albuquerque, New Mexico, and told us that a representative of the Navajo Tribal Police would call today about an artifact we had handled. He said our cooperation would be appreciated. The call was referred to me, and when I questioned him about what the federal government interest might be, this agent, this Mr. Sharkey, he, wella?S' Ms. Marcy hunted politely for a word politer than 'weaseled.'
'He made it appear that his call was not official at all. It was intended as a sort of a personal introduction.'
Leaphorn simply nodded. Sharkey hadn't wanted to make the call, had foreseen embarrassment, had been talked into it. Having been caught at it, Sharkey would be angry and hard to deal with. But then in a few more days, nothing like that would matter. Leaphorn would be a civilian. He nodded again.
'There's a system for dealing with problems like this, of course,' Ms. Marcy said. 'One petitions the appropriate court for an injunction. You then serve this order on us, and we provide you with the information. The requirement that we make available evidence needed in a judicial proceeding supersedes our own need to maintain a confidential relationship with our customers.' Her expression was bland.
After a moment, Leaphorn said, 'Of course that's a possibility. We'd like to avoid it if we could.' He shrugged. 'The paperwork. We'd like to avoid all the delay.' And, he thought, the problem of persuading the court that an item circled in a Nelson's catalog has anything at all to do with anything.
'That's understandable,' Ms. Marcy said. 'I think you can also understand our position. Our clients rely on us to keep transactions confidential. For many good reasons.' She made an inclusive gesture with small white hands. 'Burglars,' she said, 'for one example. Former wives. Business reasons. So you must understanda?S'
Ms. Marcy began pushing back her chair. When she rises, Leaphorn thought, she will tell me that without a court order she cannot give me any information. He did something he almost never did. He interrupted.
'Our problem is time,' he said. 'A woman's life may be at stake.'
Ms. Marcy lowered herself back into the chair. That little motion brought to Leaphorn's nostrils an awareness of perfume, and powder and fine feminine things. It reminded him, with overpowering force, of Emma. He closed his eyes, and opened them.
'A woman who was very interested in this particular pot--the woman who drew the circle around it in your catalog--she's been missing for weeks,' Leaphorn said. He took out his wallet, extracted his photograph of Dr. Eleanor Friedman-Bernal, the bride. He handed it to Ms. Marcy. 'Did she come in to see you? This autumn? Or call?'
'Yes,' Ms. Marcy said. 'She was in.' She studied the photograph, frowning. Leaphorn waited until she looked up.
'Dr. Eleanor Friedman-Bernal,' he said. 'An anthropologist. Published a lot of papers in the field of ceramics-- and of primitive ceramic art. We gather that Dr. Friedman-Bernal believes she has discovered an Anasazi potter whose work she can specifically identify. Did she tell you all that?'
