Talking God

saucer, and waited. “Stuck around about two hours,” he said. “Right?”

“About,” Chee agreed.

“You didn’t just stand around. You talked. What did Highhawk talk about?”

Chee shrugged. What had they talked about?

“It was cold as hell—wind out of the north. We talked about that. He thought the people wearing the yei masks must get awful frostbitten with nothing on but leggings and kilts. And he asked a lot of questions. Did the paint on their bodies insulate them from the cold? Which mask represented which yei? Questions about the ceremonial. And he knew enough about it to ask smart questions.” Chee stopped. Finished.

“About anything else?”

Chee shrugged.

Leaphorn stared at him. “That won’t get it,” he said. “I need to know.”

Chee was not in the mood for this. He felt his face flushing. “Highhawk was taping some of it,” Chee said. “He had this little tape recorder palmed. Then he’d pull it up his sleeve if anyone noticed it. You’re not supposed to do that unless you square it with the hataalii. I let that go. Didn’t say anything. And once I heard him singing the words of one of the chants. What else? He and this Gomez went into the kitchen shed once and ate some stew. And when Dashee and I arrested him, Gomez came up and wanted to know what was going on.“

“If he knew as much as he seemed to know, then he knew he shouldn’t be taping without the singer’s permission,” Leaphorn said. “And it looked to you like he was being sneaky about it?”

“It was sneaky,” Chee said. “Hiding the recorder in his palm. Up his sleeve.”

“Not very polite,” Leaphorn said. “Not as polite as his letter sounded.” He said it mostly to himself, thinking out loud.

“Letter?” Chee said, louder than he intended. The edge in his voice was enough so that at the next table two men in Federal Express delivery uniforms looked up from their waffles and stared at him.

“He wrote a letter to Agnes Tsosie,” Leaphorn said. “Very polite. Tell me about this Gomez. Describe him.”

Chee was aware that his face was flushed. He could feel it, distinctly.

“I’m on vacation,” Chee said. “I’m off duty. I want you to tell me about this letter. When did that happen? How did you know about it? How did you know about Highhawk? What the hell’s going on?”

“Well, now,” Leaphorn began, his face flushing. But then he closed his mouth. He cleared his throat. “Well, now,” he said again, “I guess you’re right.” And he told Chee about the man with pointed shoes.

Leaphorn was unusually good at telling. He organized it all neatly and chronologically. He described the body found beside the tracks east of Gallup, the cryptic note in the shirt pocket, the visit to the Agnes Tsosie place, the letter from Highhawk with Highhawk’s photograph included, what the autopsy showed, all of it.

“This little man in the next apartment, he fit the description of the man in Santillanes’ compartment on the train. No question he was interested in the Santillanes bunch. Any chance he and Gomez are the same?”

“Not the way you describe him,” Chee said. “Gomez has black hair. He’s younger than your man sounds, and taller and slender—none of those weightlifter muscles. And I think he lost several fingers.”

Leaphorn’s expression shaded from alert to very alert. “Several? What do you mean?”

“He was wearing leather gloves, but on both hands some of the fingers were stiff—as if the gloves were stuffed with cotton or maybe there was a finger in it that didn’t bend. I took a look every chance I got because it seemed funny. Strange I mean. Losing fingers off both hands.”

Leaphorn thought. “Any other scars? Deformities?”

“None visible,” Chee said. And waited. He watched Leaphorn turning these mangled fingers over in his mind. Chee reminded himself that he was on vacation and so was Leaphorn. By God, he was simply not going to let the lieutenant get away with this.

“Why?”

Leaphorn, his thoughts interrupted, looked startled. “What?”

“I can tell you’re thinking those missing fingers are important. Why are they important? How does that fit with what you know?”

“Probably they’re not important,” Leaphorn said.

“Not good enough,” Chee said. “Remember, I’m on vacation.”

Leaphorn’s expression shifted into something that might have been a grin. “I have some bad habits. A lot of them involve doing things to save time. A strange habit for a Navajo, I guess. But you’re right. You’re on vacation. So am I, for that matter.” He put down his coffee cup.

“Where do I start? Santillanes didn’t have any teeth. All pulled. But the pathologist who did the autopsy said there was no sign of any reason to have them pulled. No jawbone problems, no traces left by the gum diseases that cause you to lose your teeth. I wondered how Santillanes lost his teeth. You wondered how Gomez lost his fingers.” Leaphorn took the final sip of his coffee, signaled the waiter. “You see a connection?”

Chee hesitated. “You mean like they both might have been tortured?”

“It occurs to me. I guess they’re Chilean leftists. The right wing’s in power. There’s been a lot of reporting of the secret police, or maybe the army, knocking people off. People disappearing. Political prisoners. Murder. Torture. Some really hideous stuff causing investigations by Amnesty International.”

Chee nodded.