Talking God

“That doesn’t take long,” Janet said. “The first time I went to see Henry Highhawk, I couldn’t find his place at first. I walked right past it, and then back again. There was a car parked up the block a ways with a man sitting in it. He was staring at me, so I noticed him. Medium to small apparently. Maybe forty-five or so. Red hair, a lot of freckles, sort of a red face.” She paused and glanced at Chee with an attempt at a smile. “Do you ever wonder why they call us redskins?” she asked.

“Go on,” Chee said. “I’m interested.”

“Highhawk lives out on Capitol Hill, in a neighborhood they call Eastern Market. It’s easy to get there on the Metro. That’s the subway. So I took the Metro and walked to his house. About seven or eight blocks, maybe. I happened to walk past this guy twice sitting in his parked car, so I noticed him. Then when—”

“Hold it,” Chee said. “You mean he’d moved the car after you passed him the first time? He moved it up ahead of you?”

“Apparently. And then, when I left Highhawk’s place, he was still there. Still sitting in that car. Again, I noticed him twice more while I was walking back to the subway. He was walking the second time. Like he wanted to know where I was going and he left his car parked and followed me on foot. But he didn’t get on the subway. Or if he did, I didn’t see him.”

She paused, looked at him for reaction.

“Hmm,” Chee said, trying to sound thoughtful. He was thinking there were plenty of non-sinister reasons a man might follow Janet Pete.

“Since then, three or four times, I’ve seen him,” she added.

Chee apparently didn’t looked sufficiently impressed by this. Janet flushed.

“This isn’t Shiprock,” she said. “You don’t just keep seeing a stranger in Washington. Not unless you work in the same place. Or eat in the same place. Millions of people. But I saw this man outside the building where we have our law offices. Once in the parking lot and once outside the lobby. And not counting the Eastern Market Metro business, I saw him out at the Museum of Natural History. Too much to be a coincidence.”

“The very first time was at Highhawk’s place.“ Chee said. “Is that right? And again out in his neighborhood. Maybe he’s interested in Highhawk. And you’re Highhawk’s lawyer. Maybe he’s interested in you because of that.”

“Yes,” Janet said. “I thought of that. That’s probably it.”

“I’d offer you some refreshments if I had any,” Chee said. “In Farmington, in a seventy-five-dollar hotel, if they had anything that expensive, you’d have a little refrigerator with all those snacks and drinks in it. Or you’d have room service.”

“In Washington that comes in the three-hundred-dollar-per-day hotels,” Janet said. “But I don’t want anything. I want to know what you think of Highhawk. What do you think of all of this?”

“He struck me as slightly bent,” Chee said. “Big, good-looking belagaana, but he wants to be a Navajo. Or that’s the impression I got. And I guess he dug up those bones he’s accused of digging up to be a militant Indian.”

Janet Pete looked at him, thoughtfully. “Do you know anything that connects him with the Tano Pueblo?”

“Tano? No. Really, I know damned little. I just got stuck with the job of taking the federal warrant and going out to the Yeibichai and arresting the guy. They don’t tell you a damn thing. If they don’t give you the ‘armed and dangerous’ speech, then you presume he’s not armed or dangerous. Just pick him up, take him in, let the federals handle the rest of it. It was a fugitive warrant. You know, flight to avoid. But I heard he was wanted sdmewhere East for desecrating a graveyard, vandalism. So forth.“

Janet sat with her lower lip caught between her teeth, looking troubled.

“Jim,” she said, “I think I’m being used.”

“Oh?”

“Maybe it’s just I’m the token Navajo and Highhawk wanted a Navajo lawyer. That would make sense. Washington is lousy with lawyers but not with Navajo lawyers.”

“Guess not.”

“But I’ve got a feeling,” she added. She shook her head, got up, tried to pace. The room was, by Chee’s quick estimate, about nine feet wide and sixteen feet long, with floor space deleted for a bathroom and a closet. Pacing was not just impractical, it was impossible. Janet sat down again. “This Highhawk, he’s a publicity hound. Oh, that’s not really fair. Just say he knows how to make his point with the press and he knows the press is important to him and the press loves him. So when he waived extradition and came back here, he said he wanted a Navajo lawyer and that made the Post.” She paused, glanced at Chee. “You know me,” she said.

Chee had known her on the reservation as a lawyer on the staff of the Dinebeiina Nahiilna be Agaditahe, which translated loosely into English as “People Who Talk Fast and Help the People Out” but was more often called the DMA or Tribal Legal Aid, and which had earned a hard-nosed reputation for defending the underdog. In fact, Chee had gotten to know her when she nailed him for trying to keep one of her clients locked up in the San Juan County jail longer than Janet thought was legal or necessary.

“Knowing you, I bet you volunteered,” Chee said.

“Well, I called him,” she said. “And we talked. But I didn’t make any commitments. I thought the firm wouldn’t like it.”

“Let’s see,” Chee said. “It’s Dalman, MacArthur, Fenix, and White, isn’t it? Or something like that. They sound like they’d be a little too dignified to be representing somebody who vandalizes graveyards.”

“Dalman, MacArthur, White, and Hertzog,” Janet said. “And yes, it’s a dignified outfit. And it doesn’t handle criminal defense cases. I thought they’d want to avoid Highhawk. Especially when the case is going to make the Post every day and the client is a notorious grandstander. And I didn’t think John would like it either. But it didn’t work that way.“

“No,” Chee said. John was John McDermott. Professor John McDermott. Ex-professor. Ex-University of Arizona law faculty. Janet Pete’s mentor, faculty advisor, boss, lover, father figure. The man she’d quit her job with the