Leaphorn laughed. “I tried that. I called Jay Kennedy. You remember me telling you about him? Used to be Agent in Charge at Gallup, and we worked on several things together. Anyway, he’s retired over in Durango. So I tried it on him. No luck.”
“What did he say?”
“Same thing you just told me. If he passes it along to the Bureau, they ask him where he got it. He tells ‘em me. They ask me where I got it.”
“So what’s your solution? How about disguising your voice and giving them a telephone call?”
“I might try that. The FBI has them flying away. I could tell them one of the guys is a pilot. That would be easy for them to check, and if one of them happens to be a flier, then they’d be interested. But that’s just half of the problem.'He paused to take another bite of pancake.
She watched him chew, waited, sighed. Said, “OK, what’s the other half?”
“Maybe these three guys had nothing to do with it. Maybe Gershwin just wants them hassled for some personal reason, and if the robbers aren’t caught, this would damn sure do that sooner or later.”
She nodded. “I’ll take it under advisement, then,” she said, and left the kitchen to call her interpreter.
By the time Leaphorn had the dishes washed she was back, looking disheartened.
“Not only is he sick, he has laryngitis. He can hardly talk. I guess I’ll head back to Flagstaff and try it later.”
“Too bad,” Leaphorn said.
“Another thing. He’d told them we were coming today. And no telephone, of course, to tell them we’re not.”
“Where do these guys live?”
Louisa’s expression brightened. “Are you about to volunteer to interpret? The Navajo’s a fellow named Dalton Cayodito and the address I have is Red Mesa Chapter House. The other one’s a Ute. Lives at Towaoc on the Ute Mountain Reservation. How’s your Ute?”
“Maybe fifty words or so,” Leaphorn said. “But I could help you with Cayodito.”
“Let’s do it,” Louisa said.
“I’m thinking that a couple of the men on that list are supposed to live up there in that border country. One of ’em’s Casa Del Eco Mesa. That couldn’t be too far from the chapter house.”
Louisa laughed. “Mixing business with pleasure. Or I should say your business with my business. Or maybe my business with something that really isn’t your business.”
“The one who has a place up there—according to the notes on that paper anyway—is Everett Jorie. I can’t place him, but the name’s familiar. Probably something out of the distant past. I thought we could ask around.”
Louisa was smiling at him. “You’ve forgotten you’re retired,” she said. “For a minute there, I thought you were going along for the pleasure of my company.”
Leaphorn drove the first lap—the 110 miles from his house to the Mexican Water Trading Post. They stopped there for a sandwich and to learn if anyone there knew how to find Dalton Cayodito. The teenage Navajo handling the cash register did.
“An old, old man,” she said. “Did he used to be a singer? If that’s him, he did the Yeibichai sing for my grandmother. Is that the one you’re looking for?”
Louisa said it was. “We heard he lived up by the Red Mesa Chapter House.”
“He lives with his daughter,” the girl said. “That’s Madeleine Horsekeeper, I think they call her. Her place is -' She paused, thought, made a gesture of frustration with her hands, penciled a map on a grocery sack and handed it to Louisa.
“How about a man named Everett Jorie?” Leap-horn said. “You know where to find him? Or Buddy Baker? Or George Ironhand.”
She didn’t, but the man who had been stacking Spam cans on shelves along the back wall thought he could help.
“Hey,” he said. “Joe Leaphorn. I thought you’d retired. What you want Jorie for? If you got a law against being a damned nuisance, you oughta had him locked up long ago.”
They left the trading post a quarter hour later armed with explicit
