“How about why he was killed?”
“Just speculation,” Dillon said. “Off the record.”
Leaphorn nodded, agreeing.
“The effort that was made to avoid identification suggests that it was a continuation of the Pinochet administration’s war against the Communists in Chile,” Dillon said. He paused, studying Leaphorn to see if this needed explanation. He decided that it did.
“Some time ago, a Chilean dissident was blown up here in Washington. A car bomb. The State Department deported several Chilean nationals and delivered a warning to the ambassador. Or so I understand.” Dillon returned the same cop-to-cop smile he had received a few moments earlier from Leaphorn. “Therefore, the Chilean security people at the embassy seem to have decided they would wait until one of their targets was as far from Washington as possible before eliminating him. They would try to make sure the connection was never made.”
“I see,” Leaphorn said. “I have two more questions.”
Dillon waited.
“What will the Bureau do about the little man in apartment two?”
“I can’t discuss that,” Dillon said.
“That’s fair enough. Does the name Henry Highhawk mean anything to you?”
Dillon considered. “Henry Highhawk. No.”
“I think Kennedy mentioned him when he called the Bureau,” Leaphorn prompted.
“Oh, yeah,” Dillon said. “The name in the notebook.”
“How does this Henry Highhawk fit in? Why would Santillanes be interested in him? Why was he interested in Agnes Tsosie? Or the Yeibichai ceremonial?“
“Yeibichai ceremonial?” Dillon said, looking totally baffled. “I am not free to discuss any of that. At this point in time I cannot discuss Henry Highhawk.”
But Henry Highhawk stuck in Leaphorn’s mind. The name had been somehow familiar the first time he’d seen it written in the Santillanes notebook. It was an unusual name and it had rung some sort of dim bell in his memory. He remembered looking at the name in Santillanes’ careful little script and trying to place it, without any luck. He remembered looking at Highhawk’s photograph at Agnes Tsosie’s place. He knew he had never seen the man before. When Dillon and Akron had gone away to wherever FBI agents go, he tried again. Clearly the name had meant nothing to Dillon. Clearly, Leaphorn himself must have run across it before any of this business had begun. How? What had he been doing? He had been doing nothing unusual. Just routine police administration.
He reached for the telephone and dialed the Navajo Tribal Police building in Window Rock. In about eleven minutes he had what he wanted. Or most of it.
“A fugitive warrant? What was the original offense? Really? What date? No, I meant the date of the arrest? Where? Give me his home address off the warrant.” Leaphorn jotted down the Washington address. “Who handled the arrest for us? I’ll wait.” Leaphorn waited. “Who?”
The arresting officer was Jim Chee.
“Well, thanks,” Leaphorn said. “Is Chee still stationed up at Shiprock? Okay. I’ll call him there.”
He dialed the number of the Shiprock sub-agency police station from memory. Office Chee was on vacation. Had he left an address where he might be reached? Navajo Tribal Police rules required that he would, but Chee had a reputation for sometimes making his own rules.
“Just a second,” the clerk said. “Here it is. He’s in Washington, D.C. I’ll give you his hotel.”
Leaphorn called Chee’s hotel. Yes, Chee was still registered. But he didn’t answer his telephone. Leaphorn left a message and hung up. He sat on the bed, asking himself what could have possibly drawn Officer Jim Chee from Shiprock to Washington. Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn had never, never believed in coincidence.
Chapter Sixteen
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Leroy Fleck simply couldn’t get his mind relieved. He sat on the folding lawn chair in his empty apartment with the telephone on the floor beside him. In about an hour it would be time to go out to the phone booth and put in his once-a-month check-in call to Eddy Elkins. What he was going to say to Elkins was part of the problem. He was going to have to ask Elkins to wire him enough money to get Mama moved, enough to tide him over for the two or three days it would take The Client to pay up. He dreaded asking, because he was almost sure Elkins would just laugh and say no. But he had to get enough to move Mama.
Fleck had on his hat and his coat. It was cold in the apartment because he was trying to save on the utility bill. What he was doing while he was doing all this thinking normally brought him pleasure. He was hunting through the classified ad section of the
The tape recorder on the box against the wall made a whispering sound. Fleck glanced at it, his thoughts elsewhere. It whispered, and fell silent. The microphone he’d installed in the crawlspace above the ceiling of the Santillanes apartment was supposed to be voice activated. That really meant “sound activated.” A lot of what Fleck was recording was Mrs. Santillanes, or whoever that old Mexican woman was, running her vacuum cleaner or clattering around with the dishes. At first, he had sometimes played the tape before sending it off to the post- office-box address Elkins had given him. He’d heard a lot of household noises, and now and then people talking. But the talking was in Spanish. Fleck had picked up a little of that in Joliet from the Hispanos. Just enough to understand that most of what he was taping was family talk. What’s for dinner? Where’s my glasses? That sort of stuff. Not enough for Fleck to guess why Elkins’ clients wanted to keep track of this bunch. It had seemed to Fleck from very early in this assignment that these folks next door were smart enough to do their serious talking
