Talking God

“I think we should go talk to Highhawk,” Leaphorn said. “Okay?”

“If we can find him,” Chee said. “I called this morning. Called his house. Called his office. No answer. So I called Dr. Hartman. She’s the curator he’s working for at the museum. She hadn’t seen him either. She was looking for him.”

“Let’s go try to find him anyway,” Leaphorn said. He picked up the check.

“I didn’t tell you about last night,” Chee said. He described how Highhawk had taken the telephone call, then left saying he’d be right back, and never returned.

“I think we should go on out there. See if we can find the man. Try his house and if he’s not there, we’ll try the Smithsonian.”

Chee put on his hat and followed.

“Why not?” he said, but even as he said it he had a feeling they weren’t going to find Henry Highhawk.

They took a cab to Eastern Market.

“Stick around a minute until we see if our party is home,” Leaphorn said.

The cabby was a plump young man with a mass of curly brown hair and fat, red lips. He pulled a paperback copy of Passage to Quivera off the dashboard and opened it. “It’s your money,” he said. “Spend it any way you like.”

Leaphorn punched the doorbell. They listened to it buzz inside. He punched it again. Chee walked back down the porch steps and rescued the morning paper from where it had been thrown beside the front walk. He showed it to Leaphorn. He nodded. Punched the doorbell again. Chee walked to the window, shaded the glass with his hands. The blinds were up, the curtains open. The room was empty and dark on this dreary, overcast morning.

“What do you think?” Chee said.

Leaphorn shook his head, rang the bell again. He tried the doorknob. Locked.

“Curtains open, blinds up,” Chee said. “If he came home last night, maybe he didn’t turn on the lights.”

“Maybe not.” Leaphorn tried the door again. Still locked. “I know a cop here,” he said. “I think we’ll give him a call and see what he thinks.”

“FBI?” Chee asked.

“A real cop,” Leaphorn said. “A captain on the Washington police force.”

They took the cab to the public phone booths at the Eastern Market Metro station. Leaphorn made his call. Chee waited, watching the cabby read and trying to decide what the hell Highhawk was doing. Where had he gone? Why had he gone? How was Bad Hands involved in this? He thought of Bad Hands in the role of revolutionary. He thought of how it would feel to have your fingers removed by a torturer trying to make you talk. Leaphorn climbed back into the cab.

“He said he would meet us at a little coffee place in the old Post Office building.”

The cabby was awaiting instructions. “You know how to find it?” Leaphorn asked.

“Is the Pope a Catholic?” the cabby said.

They found Captain Rodney awaiting them just inside the coffee shop door, a tall, bulky black man wearing bifocals, a gray felt hat, and a raincoat to match. The sight of Leaphorn provoked a huge, delighted, white-toothed grin.

“This is Jim Chee,” Leaphorn said. “One of our officers.”

They shook hands. Rodney’s craggy, coffee-colored face usually registered expression only when Rodney allowed it to do so. Now, just for a moment, it registered startled surprise. He removed the fedora, revealing kinky gray hair cropped close to the skull.

“Jim Chee,” he said, memorizing Chee’s face. “Well, now.”

“Rodney and I go way back,” Leaphorn said. “We survived the FBI Academy together.”

“Two misfits,” Rodney said. “Back in the days when all FBI agents had blue eyes instead of just most of them.” Rodney chuckled, but his eyes never left Chee. “That’s when I first learned that our friend here”—he indicated Leaphorn with a thumb—“has this practice of just telling you what he thinks you have to know.”

They were at a table now and Leaphorn was ordering coffee. Now he looked surprised. “Like what?” he said. “What do you mean by that?”

Rodney was still looking at Chee. “You work for this guy, right? Or with him, anyway.”

“More or less,” Chee said, wondering where this was leading. “Now I’m on vacation.”

Rodney laughed. “Vacation. Is that a fact. You just happen to be three thousand miles east of home at the same time as your boss. I think maybe I was blaming Joe for something that’s a universal Navajo trait.“

“What are we talking about here?” Leaphorn asked.

“About the Navajo Tribal Police sending two men”—he pointed a finger at Leaphorn and then at Chee—“two men, count ’em, to Washington, Dee, Cee, which is several miles out of their jurisdiction, to look for a fellow which us local cops didn’t even yet know there was a reason to be looking for.”

“Nobody sent us here,” Leaphorn said.

Rodney ignored the remark. He was staring at Chee.

“What time did you leave the Smithsonian last night?”

Chee told him. He was baffled. How did this Washington policeman know he had been at the museum last night? Why would he care? Something must have happened to Highhawk.