A cold wind out of the northwest had blown away the drizzle. They walked down the steps from Highhawk’s porch and passed a blue Datsun parked at the sidewalk. It wasn’t the car Bad Hands had been driving at the Agnes Tsosie place, but that had been three thousand miles away. That one was probably rented. “What’d you think?” Janet Pete asked.
“I don’t know,” Chee said. “He’s an interesting man.”
“Gomez or Highhawk?”
“Both of them,” Chee said. “I wonder what happened to Gomez’s hands. I wonder why Highhawk calls him an old friend. But I meant Highhawk. He’s interesting.”
“Yeah,” Janet said. “And suicidal. He’s flat determined to go to jail.” They walked a little. “Stupid son of a bitch,” she added. “I could get him off with some community service time and a suspended sentence.”
“You know anything about this Gomez guy?” Chee asked.
“Just what I told you and what Highhawk said. Old friends. Gomez posted his bail.”
’They’re not old friends,“ Chee said. ”I told you that. I saw them meet at that Yeibichai where I arrested him. Highhawk had never seen the guy before.“
“You sure of that? How do you know?”
“I know,” Chee said.
Janet put her hand on his arm, slowed. “There he is,” she said in a tiny voice. “That car. That’s the man who’s been following me.”
The car was parked across the street from them. An aging Chevy two-door, its medium color hard to distinguish in the shadows.
“You sure?” Chee said.
“See the radio antenna? Bent like that? And the dent in the back fender? It’s the same car.” Janet was whispering. “I really looked at it. I memorized it.”
What to do? His inclination was to ignore this situation, to simply walk past the car and see what happened. Nothing would happen, except Janet would think he was a nerd. He felt uneasy. On the reservation, he would have simply trotted across the street and confronted the driver. But confront him with what? Here Chee felt inept and incompetent. This entire business seemed like something one saw on television. It was urban. It seemed dangerous but it was probably just silly. What the devil would the Washington Police Department recommend in such a circumstance?
They were still walking very slowly. “What should we do?” Janet asked.
“Stay here,” Chee said. “I’ll go see about it.”
He walked diagonally across the street, watching the dim light reflecting from the driver’s-side window. What would he do if the window started down? If he saw a gun barrel? But the window didn’t move.
Beside the car now, Chee could see a man behind the steering wheel, looking at him.
Chee tapped on the glass. Wondering why he was doing this. Wondering what he would say.
Nothing happened. Chee waited. The man behind the wheel appeared to be motionless.
Chee tapped on the window again, rapping the glass with the knuckles of his right hand.
The window came down, jerkily, squeaking.
“Yeah?” the man said. He was looking up at Chee. A small face, freckled. The man had short hair. It seemed to be red. “Whaddaya want?”
Chee wanted very badly to get a better look at the man. He seemed to be small. Unusually small. Chee could see no sign that he was armed, but that would be hard to tell in the darkness of the front seat.
“The lady I’m with, she thinks you’ve been following her,” Chee said. “Any reason for her to think that?”
“Following her?” The man leaned forward toward the window, looking past Chee at Janet Pete waiting across the street. “What for?”
“I’m asking if you’ve been following her,” Chee said.
“Hell, no,” the man said. “What is this anyway? Who the hell are you?”
“I’m a cop,” Chee said, thinking as he said it that it was the first smart thing he’d said in this conversation. And it was more or less true. A good thing to have said as long as this guy didn’t ask for identification.
The man looked up at him. “You sure as hell don’t look like a cop to me,” he said. “You look like an Indian. Let’s see some identification.”
“Let’s see your identification,” Chee said.
“Ah, screw this,” the man said, disappearing from the window. The glass squeaked as he rolled it up. The engine started. The headlights came on. The car rolled slowly away from the curb and down the street. It made a careful right turn and disappeared. Absolutely no hurry.
Chee watched it go. Through the back window he noticed that only the top of the driver’s head protruded above the back of the seat. A very small driver.
Chapter Twelve
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Since boyhood Fleck had been one of those persons who like to worry about one thing at a time. This morning he wanted to worry only about Mama. What the devil was he going to do about her? He was up against the Fat Man’s deadline. Get her out of that nursing home. “
