Talking God

he does. So he wants a Navajo attorney.”

“Totally his idea then,” Chee said, sounding skeptical. “You didn’t volunteer?”

Janet laughed. “Well, there’s been a lot about the case in the papers here. Highhawk’s a conservator at the Smithsonian and he’d been raising hell about them keeping a million or so Native American skeletons in their warehouse, and last year they tried to fire him. So he went and filed a suit and won his job back. It was a First Amendment case. First Amendment cases get a lot of space in the Washington Post. Then he pulls this caper you arrested him for. He dug up a couple of graves up in New England, and of course he picked a historically prominent couple, and that got him a lot more publicity. So I knew about him, and I had read about the Navajo connection…” Her voice trailed off.

“I think you have a strange one for a client,” Chee said. “Any chance to get him off?”

“Not if he gets his way. He wants to make it a political debate. He wants to put the belagaana grave robbers on trial for robbing Indian graves while he’s on trial for digging up a couple of whites. It might work in Washington, if I could pick the right jury. But the trial will be up in New Haven or someplace up in New England. Up in that part of the country everybody’s happy memories are of hearing great-granddaddy tell about killing off the redskins.“

Another pause. Chee found himself looking at the picture. Mary Landon and Jim Chee on the doorstep, clowning. Mary’s hair was incredibly soft. Out on the malpais that day they went on the picnic, it had blown around her face. He had used his first finger to brush it away from her forehead. Mary’s voice saying: “You have a choice. You know if you go to the FBI Academy, then you’ll do well, and you know they’ll offer you a job. They need some Navajo agents. It’s not as if you didn’t have any choice.” And he had said, you have a choice, too, or something like that. Something inane.

“You’re probably supposed to be working,” Janet Pete was saying, “and I don’t know what I called about exactly anyway. I think I just hoped you could tell me something helpful about Gomez. Or about Highhawk.”

Or wanted to hear a friendly voice, Chee thought. It was his own feeling, exactly. “Maybe I’m overlooking something,” Chee said. “Maybe if I understood the problem better—”

“I don’t understand the problem myself.”

Janet said. She exhaled noisily. “Look. What would you think if you’re talking to your client and it went like this. This guy’s going on trial for desecrating a grave. You are being very cool, trying to talk some sense into him about how to handle it if he actually did what they accuse him of, and all of a sudden he says: ‘Of course I did it. I’m proud I did it. But would you be my lawyer for another crime?’ And I say, ‘What crime?’ And he says, ‘It hasn’t been committed yet.’ And I don’t know what to say to that so I say something flippant. ‘If you’re going to dig up another grave, I don’t want to hear about it,’ I say. And he says, ‘No, this one would be something better than that.’ And I look at him, surprised, you know. I’m thinking it’s a joke, but his face is solemn. He’s not joking.”

“Did he tell you what crime?”

“I said, ‘What crime? How serious?’ And he said we can’t talk about it. And, if we told you, you would be an accessory before the fact. He was smiling when he said that. Notice, he said we.”

“We,” Chee repeated. “Any idea who? Is he part of some sort of Indian Power organization? Is somebody working with him on this ‘free the bones’ project?”

“Well, he’s always talking about his Taho Society but I think he’s the only member. This time I think he meant Gomez.”

“Why Gomez?”

“I don’t know. Gomez brings him to my office. I call Highhawk at Highhawk’s place, and Gomez answers the telephone. Gomez always seems to be around. Did you know Gomez bonded him out after you picked him up in Arizona?”

“I didn’t,” Chee said. “Maybe they’re just friends.”

“I wanted to ask you about that,” Janet said. “Did they come to the Yeibichai together? Did you get the feeling they were friends? Old friends?”

“They were strangers,” Chee said. “I’m sure of that.” He remembered the scene, described it to Janet—Gomez arriving first, waiting in the rental car, disinterested, making contact with Highhawk. He described the clear, obvious fact that Highhawk didn’t know Gomez. “I’d say that Gomez came to the Yeibichai just to find Highhawk. But how could he have known Highhawk was coming, if they were really strangers?”

“That’s easy. The same way the FBI knew where to arrest him,” Janet said. “He told everybody, the woman he rents his apartment from, his neighbors, his drinking buddies, the people he works with at the Smithsonian, told everybody, that he was coming out to Arizona to attend a Yeibichai for his shima’sa’ni’.”

“He used that word? Maternal grandmother?”

“Well, he told them he had found this old woman in his Bitter Water Clan. He claims his maternal grandmother was a Bitter Water Dineh. And he claims the old woman had invited him to her Yeibichai.”

Chee found he was getting interested in all this. “Well, whatever, when I saw them, Gomez was trying to get acquainted with a stranger. Either that, or they’re both good actors. And who would they be trying to fool?” Chee didn’t wait for an answer to that rhetorical question. He was thinking about what Janet had said about the crime not yet committed. Something serious. Something “we” couldn’t talk about.

“I’d say you have a very flaky client,” Chee added. “Any reason to think this isn’t just some neurotic Lone Ranger trying to impress a pretty lawyer?”

“There’s a little bit more,” Janet Pete said. “His telephone is tapped.”

“Oh,” Chee said. “He tell you that?”

“I heard the click. The interference on the line. I called him just before I called you. In fact, that’s what actually motivated me to make this call.”

“Oh,” Chee said. “I thought maybe you were missing me.”

“That too,” Janet said. “That, and somebody’s been following me.”