Fleck put down the telephone and picked up the camera. It rattled against the door, making him aware that he was shaking with rage. He took a deep breath. Held it. Through the range-finder he saw The Client emerge from the telephone booth, umbrella folded. He stood with hand outstretched, looking around, confirming that the rain had stopped. Fleck had taken four shots before he walked down the sidewalk away from him.
Fleck let The Client get well around the corner before he left the car to follow. He kept a block behind him down Eighteenth Street, and then east to Sixteenth. There The Client turned again. He walked down the row of second- string embassies and disappeared down a driveway.
Fleck walked past it with only a single sidelong glance. It was just enough to tell him who he was working for.
Chapter Thirteen
« ^ »
Since Joe Leaphorn and Dockery had arrived a little early, and the Amtrak train had arrived a little late, Leaphorn had been given the opportunity to answer a lot of Dockery’s questions. He’d presumed that Dockery had volunteered to come down to Union Station on his day off because Dockery was interested in murder. And clearly Dockery was interested in that. And he was interested in what Perez might have seen in the roomette of his doomed passenger. But Dockery seemed even more interested in Indians.
“Sort of a fascination with me ever since I was a kid,” Dockery began. “I guess it was all those cowboy and Indian movies. Indians always interested me. But I never did know any. Never had the opportunity.” And Leaphorn, not knowing exactly what to say to this, said: “I never knew any railroad people, either.”
“They have this commercial on TV. Shows an Indian looking at all this trash scattered around the landscape. There’s a tear running down his cheek. You seen that one?”
Leaphorn nodded. He had seen it.
“Are Indians really into that worshiping Mother Earth business?”
Leaphorn considered that. “It depends on the Indian. The Catholic bishop at Gallup, he’s an Indian.”
“But in general,” Dockery said. “You know what I mean.”
“There are all kinds of Indians,” Leaphorn said. “What religion are you?”
“Well, now,” Dockery said. He thought about it. “I don’t go to church much. I guess you’d have to say I’m a Christian. Maybe a Methodist.”
“Then your religion is closer to some Indians’ than mine is,” Leaphorn said.
Dockery looked skeptical.
“Take the Zunis or the Hopis or the Taos Indians for example,” said Leaphorn, who was thinking as he spoke that this sort of conversation always made him feel like a complete hypocrite. His own metaphysics had evolved from the Navajo Way into a belief in a sort of universal harmony of cause and effect caused by God when He started it all. Inside of that, the human intelligence was somehow intricately involved with God. By some definitions, he didn’t have much religion. Obviously, neither did Dockery, for that matter. And the subject needed changing. Leaphorn dug out his notebook, opened it, and turned to the page on which he’d reproduced the list from the folded paper. He asked Dockery if he’d noticed that the handwriting on that paper was different from the fine, careful script in the passenger’s notebook.
“I didn’t take a really close look at it,” Dockery said.
About what Leaphorn had expected. But it was better than talking religion. He turned another page and came to the place he had copied “AURANOFIN W1128023” from the passenger’s notebook. That had puzzled him. The man apparently spoke Spanish, but it didn’t seem to be a Spanish word.
He showed it to Dockery. “Can you make any sense out of that?”
Dockery looked at it. He shook his head. “Looks like the number off an insurance policy, or something like that. What’s the word mean?”
“I don’t know,” Leaphorn said.
“Sounds like a medicine my wife used to take. Former wife, that is. Expensive as hell. I think it cost about ninety cents a capsule.”
The sound of the train arriving came through the wall. Leaphorn was thinking that in a very few minutes he would be talking to a conductor named Perez, and that there was very little reason to believe Perez could tell him anything helpful. This was the final dead end. After this he would go back to Farmington and forget the man who had kept his worn old shoes so neatly polished.
Or try to forget him. Leaphorn knew himself well enough to recognize his weakness in that respect. He had always had difficulty leaving questions unanswered. And it had become no better with the age that, in his case, hadn’t seemed to have brought any wisdom. All he had gotten out of Dockery was more evidence of how careful the killer of Pointed Shoes had been. That catalog of things on the folded paper must have been intended as a checklist, things to be checked off to avoid leaving behind any identification. The dentures were gone. So were the glasses, and their case, which might have contained a name and address, and prescription bottles which would certainly have a name on them. Prescription bottles were specifically mentioned on the checklist. And judging from the autopsy report the man must have taken medications. But no prescription bottles were in the luggage. He didn’t need more evidence of the killer’s cleverness. What he needed was some clue to the victim’s identity. He would talk to Perez but it would be more out of courtesy—since he had wasted everyone’s time to arrange this meeting—than out of hope.
Perez didn’t think he’d be much help.
“I just got one look at him,” the attendant said, after Dockery had introduced them and led them back to a cold, almost unfurnished room, where the passenger’s luggage sat on a long, wooden table. “I’d noticed this passenger wasn’t feeling all that great so I went by his compartment to see if he needed any help. I heard somebody moving in there but when I tapped on the door, nobody answered. I thought that was funny.”
Perez pushed his uniform cap back to the top of his head and looked at them to see if that needed explanation.
