estimate of the loot sounded a little high to me. She said it sounded just about right for an end-of-the-month payday Friday night.”
“Wow,” Louisa said. “And that mostly comes from people who can’t afford to lose it. I think you Navajos were smart to say no to gambling.”
“I guess so,” Leaphorn said.
“On the other hand, in the old days when the Utes were stealing your horses they had to come down and get ’em. Now you drive up there and hand over the cash.”
Leaphorn nodded. “So I told her I was guessing that the loot would be mostly in smaller bills. A
very few hundreds or fifties, and mostly twenties, tens, fives, and ones. She said that was a good guess. So I asked her how much that would weigh.”
“Weigh?”
“She said if we decide the median of bills in the loot was about ten dollars, which she thought would be close, that would be forty-five thousand bills. The weight of that would be just about one hundred and seven pounds and eleven ounces.”
“I can’t believe this,” Louisa said. “Right off the top of her head?”
“No. She had to do some arithmetic. She said banks get their money supply in counted bundles. They put the bundles on special scales to make sure someone with sticky fingers isn’t slipping a bill out here and there.”
Louisa shook her head. “There’s so much going on out in the real world we academics don’t know about.” She paused, thinking. “For example, now I’m wondering how any of this is causing you to get suspicious about Gershwin’s visit.”
“Ms Trujillo once ran the bank Everett Jorie used. I asked her if she could tell me anything about Jorie’s financial situation. She said probably not, but since Jorie was dead and his account frozen until an estate executor showed up, she could maybe give me some general hints. She said Jorie had both a checking and a savings account. He had “some” balance in the first one and “several thousand dollars” in the other. Plus a fine credit rating.”
“Then why in the world—But he said it was to help finance their little revolution, didn’t he? I guess that explains it. But it doesn’t explain how you knew where Jorie did his banking.”
“The checkbook was on Jorie’s desk,” Leaphorn said.
Louisa was grinning at him. “Oh, really,” she said. “Right out there in plain sight just where people keep their checkbooks. Wasn’t that convenient for you?”
Leaphorn chuckled. “Well, maybe I had to inch open a desk drawer a little. But anyway, then I asked if Ray Gershwin banked with her, and she said not now, but he used to. They’d turned him down for a loan last spring, and Gershwin had gotten sore about it and moved his business elsewhere. And did she know anything about Gershwin’s current solvency. She laughed and said it was bad last spring, and she doubted if it was going to get any better. I asked why not, and she said Gershwin may lose his biggest grazing lease. Some sort of litigation is pending in federal court. So I called the district court clerk up in Denver to ask about that. He called me back and said the case was moot. The plaintiff had died.”
Silence. Leaphorn angled to the left off of Navajo Route 12 onto New Mexico Highway 134.
“Now we cross Washington Pass,” he said. “Named after the governor of New Mexico Territory who thought this part of the world was full of gold, silver and so forth and was an early believer in ethnic cleansing. He’s the one who sent Kit Carson and the New Mexico Hispanos and the Utes to round us up and get rid of us—once and for all. The Tribal Council got the government to agree to change the name a few years ago, but everybody still calls it Washington Pass. I guess that proves we Navajos don’t hold grudges. We’re tolerant.”
“I’m not,” Louisa said. “I’m tired of waiting for you to tell me the name of the deceased plaintiff.”
“I’ll bet you’ve already guessed.”
“Everett Jorie?”
“Right. Interesting, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Let me think about it.”
She did. “That could be a motive for murder, couldn’t it?”
“Good enough I’d think.”
“And lots of irony there,” Louisa said, ”if irony is the word for it. It reminds you of one of those awful wildlife films you’re always seeing on television. The lions pull down the zebra, and then the jackals and the buzzards move in to take advantage. Only this time it’s
