Bernie was laughing. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was just sort of kidding you, Jim. I’m bad about that. Kidding people. Actually, the only way I’d go back to the Border Patrol would be if I could take you along. And you could be boss, too, since the one I was working for got fired. But first I’ve got to marry you.”
“Sooner the better,” Chee said.
“Anyway, I want to go with you. I’ll get all packed, sleeping bag and all. Where are you meeting Cowboy, and when? And do I need to come there, or will you pick me up? I know you have to carry drinking water into the canyon. Should I bring any food?”
Chee sighed. “I guess so,” he said, recognizing a lost argument, probably the first of many. But Bernie was right. It would be fun.
10
Brad Chandler had pulled his rental Land Rover into the arriving passengers’ parking zone of the Flagstaff airport, scanned those hurrying past to the shuttle buses, and spotted the man who must be the one he had come for. His name was Fred Sherman, a bulky man carrying a bulging briefcase, wearing a sweat-stained cowboy hat, and looking like a middle-aged retired policeman—which was exactly what he was. Chandler lowered the passenger-side window, waved, shouted.
“Hey, Sherman! Over here.”
Fred Sherman came to the car, not hurrying. He leaned on the windowsill. “Yo, Chandler,” he said. “Long time since I’ve dealt with you.”
Chandler motioned Sherman into the car. “Let’s go talk business.”
Sherman settled himself in the front seat. “Pretty fancy truck for a skip tracer to be driving,” he said, studying Chandler. “I been wondering what you looked like ever since you got me to help grab that Phoenix bond jumper a while back. You sounded like a kid on the telephone.” He chuckled. “Come to think of it, you still did when you called me last week.”
“You sounded like some old fart in a nursing home,” Chandler said, “but you look healthy enough. What kind of information have you got for me?”
“First I got a question. What’s my split on this?”
“No split,” Chandler said. “If we bomb out, we pay you your expenses plus your regular hourly rate. If we get the deal done, you get that plus a twenty-thousand bonus.”
Sherman digested that. Looked at Chandler. “This don’t sound a bit like a bail bond case.”
“I already told you that,” Chandler said. “I told you I want you to find out everything you can about that robbery-homicide they were holding a Hopi Indian named Billy Tuve for doing. Everything about that big diamond he had that got him arrested. Everything about who has just bonded him out. And why they put up the money. This Tuve hasn’t jumped bond. But I want to know where he’s living now. Probably he’s at his home on the Hopi Reservation. But I want to know for sure. And what’s he doing? What’s going on? Has he just gone home and rested? Or what?”
It occurred to Chandler as he finished that string of bad-tempered questions that he had adopted exactly the same arrogant tone that Plymale had used with him. Sherman was staring at him now, eyes squinted, an expression that suggested he, Sherman, hadn’t liked it any better than Chandler had. But Sherman merely shrugged.
“Well, now,” he said. “First I have another question. Where are you taking me now?”
“I’m going to get someplace where those airport security rent-a-cops won’t be hassling us to move along. We’re going to circle like we’re waiting to pick up a passenger. Then when we get our talking done, I’ll drop you off at the cabstand.”
“It would be quicker to just go into Flagstaff, stop at my hotel, and do our talking in air-conditioned comfort,” Sherman said. “Maybe in the bar with a Scotch-and-water in hand.”
Chandler ignored that.
Sherman studied him. “I’d guess you have some reason that I can’t think of right now not to want somebody or other to see you and me together at the hotel. Does that sound like a sensible guess?”
“Possibly,” Chandler said.
“Well, then, let’s see if I can answer some of those questions you were asking.”
Sherman extracted a slim little notebook from a shirt pocket.
“The bond for Billy Tuve was fifty thou,” Sherman began, and recited what else he’d learned at the clerk’s office, down to Tuve leaving the place with Joanna Craig.
“Going where?” Chandler asked.
“Be cool,” Sherman said. “The hotel where she was staying in Gallup was the El Rancho,” he reported, and then rattled off what and who he’d seen there, down to the ordering of room service. “Then…”
Sherman paused, peered at Chandler. “I understand this right, don’t I? You’re paying the expenses.”
Chandler nodded.
“I mention it because this cost me twenty bucks. The clerk was getting tired of talking to me. Anyway, then a big, tall Navajo, looked like an athlete, showed up with a Hopi deputy sheriff, asking about Joanna Craig. They went up to her room. A while later another Indian came in. He said he was supposed to come to the hotel and pick up Billy Tuve. Said he was his uncle giving him a ride back out to Second Mesa, wherever that is. Sounded like he was taking him home. So the clerk called Ms. Craig’s room, and they all came out and left.”
“All? Tuve left with them? And were they all together? Or how?”
“Tuve left with the man who claimed to be his uncle. Then the other two men left. Don’t know about Ms. Craig because I left myself.”
“How about why she put up Tuve’s bond?”
Sherman responded to that with an incredulous stare.
“Well? What’s the answer?”
“If I had been dumb enough to ask her, her answer would have been it was none of my damn business. And who was I, and who was I working for, and so forth,” Sherman said. “But I’d guess it’s something to do with that lawsuit you were telling me about on the telephone. You didn’t tell me much, but you did say we’d be working for one side of some sort of big-money court case.”
“How about the diamond? Where it came from?”
“Tuve told the cops an old man swapped it with him for his shovel. Down at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.” Sherman laughed. “My connections in the district attorney’s office weren’t taking that very seriously when I first asked ’em about the case, but I have something new on that. I got a call back from my man there, and he told me—”
“Hold it,” Chandler said, and pulled the Land Rover into a tree-shaded turn bay, and stopped. “Told you what?”
“Told me another diamond had turned up. Or at least another diamond story. Come to think of it, two new diamond stories. Both pretty doubtful.”
“Go on,” Chandler said.
“This first one sounds like what you call a groundless rumor. My man heard from a cop he knows in the New Mexico State Police, got it from somebody in the Navajo County Sheriff’s Department, who picked it up in Window Rock. Probably from Navajo Tribal Police, who—”
“Come on,” said Chandler. “Cut down on the BS. What’s the story?”
Sherman said nothing.
Chandler glanced at him, noticed his expression. Said, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so impatient.”
“The story is that a little trading post at Short Mountain, way up in the northwest corner of the Navajo Reservation, got burglarized some years back. Owner gave the cops a list of missing stuff, including a very expensive diamond. When this robbery-homicide Tuve pulled off came up, with Tuve trying to pawn a big diamond, the old Navajo cop who had worked the Short Mountain case checked on it. The trader claimed a cowboy had come in out of a snowstorm and traded it to him for some groceries and a ride into Page. This cowboy said he was down at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and an old man came along and swapped him the diamond for a fancy jackknife he had.”
Chandler considered this without comment.