more, a narrow tube of rolled leather. Its eyes were black dots surmounted by painted brows. The lower rim of the mask was a ruff of fox fur. Chee stared at it, surprised. Such masks are guarded, handed down in the family only to a son willing to learn the poetry and ritual of the Night Chant, and to carry the role his father kept as a Yeibichai dancer.
Keepers of such masks gave the spirits that lived within them feedings of corn pollen. Chee examined this mask. He found no sign of the smearing pollen would have left on the leather. It was probably a replica Highhawk had made. Even so, when he closed the cardboard flaps on the box, he did so reverently.
Three shelves beside the only window were lined with the wooden figures of the kachina spirits. Mostly Hopi, it seemed to Chee, but he noticed Zuni Mudheads and the great beaked Shalako, the messenger bird from the Zuni heavens, and the striped figures of Rio Grande Pueblo clown fraternities. Most of them looked old and authentic. That also meant expensive.
Behind him in the front room, Chee heard Janet’s voice rise in argument, and Highhawk’s laugh. He presumed Janet was telling her client during this ironic gesture at confidentiality what she had already told Chee on the walk from the subway. The prosecutor with jurisdiction over crime in Connecticut had more important things on his mind than disturbed graves, especially when they involved a minority political gesture. He would welcome some sort of plea-bargain compromise. Highhawk and attorney would be welcome to come in and discuss it. More than welcome.
“I don’t think this nut of mine will go for it,” Janet had told Chee. “Henry wants to do a Joan of Arc with all the TV cameras in sharp focus. He’s got the speech already written. ’If this is justice for me, to go to jail for digging up your ancestors, where then is the justice for the whites who dug up the bones of my ancestors?’ He won’t agree, not today anyway, but I’ll make the pitch. You come along and it will give you a chance to talk to him and see what you think.”
And, sure enough, from the combative tone Chee could hear in Highhawk’s voice, Janet’s client wasn’t going for it. But what the devil was Chee supposed to learn here? What was he supposed to think? That Highhawk was taller than he remembered? And had changed his hairstyle? That wasn’t what Janet expected. She expected him to smell out some sort of plot involving her law firm, and a fellow following her, and a big corporation developing land in New Mexico. He looked around the cluttered office. Fat chance.
But it was interesting. Flaky as he seemed, Highhawk was an artist. Chee noticed a half-finished Mudhead figure on the table and picked it up. The traditional masks, as Chee had seen them at Zuni Shalako ceremonials, were round, clay-colored, and deformed with bumps. They represented the idiots born after a daughter of the Sun committed incest with her brother. Despite the limiting conventions of little round eyes and little round mouth, Highhawk had carved into the small face of this figurine a kind of foolish glee. Chee put it down carefully and reinspected the kachinas on the shelf. Had Highhawk made them, too? Chee checked. Some of them, probably. Some looked too old and weathered for recent manufacture. But perhaps Highhawk’s profession made him skilled in aging, too.
It was then he noticed the sketches. They were stacked on the top level of the roll-top desk, done on separate sheets of heavy artist’s paper. The top one showed a boy, a turkey with its feathers flecked with jewels, a log, smoke rising from it as it was burned to hollow it into a boat. The setting was a riverbank, a cliff rising behind it. Chee recognized the scene. It was from the legend of Holy Boy, the legend reenacted in the Yeibichai ceremony. It showed the spirit child, still human, preparing for his journey down the San Juan River with his pet turkey. The artist seemed to have captured the very moment when the illness which was to paralyze him had struck the child. Somehow the few lines which suggested his naked body also suggested that he was falling, in the throes of anguish. And above him, faintly in the very air itself, there was the blue half-round face of the spirit called Water Sprinkler.
The sound of Highhawk's laugh came from the adjoining room, and Janet Pete's earnest voice. Chee sorted through the other sketches. Holy Boy floating in his hollow log, prone and paralyzed, with the turkey running on the bank beside him—neck and wings outstretched in a kind of frozen panic; Holy Boy, partially cured but now blind, carrying the crippled Holy Girl on his shoulders; the two children, hand in hand, surrounded by the towering figures of Talking God, Growling God, Black God, Monster Slayer, and the other
Aside from this element, he was much impressed both by Highhawk’s talent and by the man’s knowledge of Navajo metaphysics. The poetry of the Yeibichai ceremonial usually used didn’t include the role of the girl child. Highhawk had obviously done his homework.
The doorbell rang, startling Chee. He put down the sketch and went to the office door. Highhawk was talking to someone at the front door, ushering him into the living room.
It was a man, slender, dark, dressed in the standard uniform of Washington males.
“As you can see, Rudolfo, my lawyer is always on the job,” Highhawk was saying. The man turned and bowed to Janet Pete, smiling.
It was Rudolfo Gomez, Mr. Bad Hands.
“I’ve come at a bad time,” Bad Hands said. “I didn’t notice Miss Pete’s car outside. I didn’t realize you were having a conference.”
Jim Chee stepped out of the office. Bad Hands recognized him instantly, and with a sort of controlled shock that seemed to Chee to include not just surprise but a kind of dismay.
“And this is Jim Chee,” Highhawk said. “You gentlemen have met before. Remember? On the reservation. Mr. Chee is the officer who arrested me. Jim Chee, this is Rudolfo Gomez, an old friend.”
“Ah, yes,” Bad Hands said. “Of course. This is an unexpected pleasure.”
“And Mr. Gomez is the man who put up my bail,” Highhawk said to Chee. “An old friend.”
Bad Hands was wearing his gloves. He made no offer to shake hands. Neither did Chee. It was not, after all, a Navajo custom.
“Sit down,” Highhawk said. “We were talking about my preliminary hearing.”
“I’ve come at a bad time,” Bad Hands said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“No. No,” Janet Pete said. “We’re finished. We were just leaving.” She gave Chee the look.
“Right,” Chee said. “We have to go.”
