“You’re getting a lot of money, you know. That’s not just to pay for excuses.”
“When we get right down to it,” Fleck said, “you’re owing me some money. There was just two thousand in that package Monday. You owed me another ten.”
“The ten is if the job was done right,” The Client said. “We don’t know that yet.”
“What the hell you mean? It’s been almost a month and not a word about anything in the papers.” Fleck was usually very good at keeping his emotion out of his voice. It was one of the skills he prided himself in, one of the tricks he’d learned in the recreation yards of detention centers and jails and, finally, at Joliet. But now you could hear the anger. “I need that money. And I’m going to get it.”
“You will get it when we decide nothing went wrong with that job,” The Client said. “Now shut up about it. I want to talk to you about Santero. We still don’t know where he went when he left the District. That worries us.”
And so the man who called himself Stone talked about Santero and Fleck half listened, his mouth stiff and set with his anger. Stone outlined a plan. Fleck told him the number of the pay phone where he would be next Tuesday, blurting it out because he had some things to say to this arrogant son of a bitch. Some rules to lay down, and some understanding that Fleck was nobody’s nigger.
“So that’ll be the number and now I want you to listen—” Fleck began, but he heard the line disconnect. He stared at the phone. “You son of a bitch,” he said. “You dirty son of a bitch.” His voice squeaked with the anger. The rage. This was what Mama had told them about. Him and Delmar. About the ruling class. The way they put you down if you let them. Treated you like niggers. Like dogs. And the only way you kept your head up, the only way to keep from being a bum and a wino, was by getting even. Always keeping things even. Always keeping your pride.
He walked back toward his apartment thinking about how he would go about it. Lot of work to be done. They knew who he was, he’d bet a million dollars on that. The shyster pretended otherwise. Elkins pretended that what he called “protective insulation” worked both ways. But lawyers lied. Lawyers were part of Them. Leroy Fleck would be expendable, something to be thrown to the police when he wasn’t useful. Safer for everybody to have Fleck dead, or back in lockup. But The Client was where the money came from, so The Client would know everything he wanted to know.
There would be plenty of time to even that up, Fleck thought, because there was nothing he could do until he had Mama taken care of. He had to have another place for her, and that always meant a big advance payment. While he was hunting a place for Mama, he’d find out just who The Client was and where he could find him. Now he was almost certain The Client was an embassy. Spanish-speaking. Some country that had revolution problems, judging from the work they had him doing.
Chapter Six
« ^ »
The trouble was nobody was interested. November had become December and the man with the pointed shoes remained nameless, an unresolved problem. Somewhere someone worried and waited for him. Or, if they had guessed his fate, they mourned him. The man had taken on a personality in Joe Leaphorn’s mind. Once he would have discussed him with Emma, and Emma would have had something sensible to say.
“Of course no one is interested,” Emma would have said in that small, soft voice. “The Bureau doesn’t have to take jurisdiction so it’s not an FBI problem. And McKinley County has had about five bodies since then to worry about and these bodies are local with relatives who vote. And it didn’t happen on the reservation, and it wouldn’t be your problem even if it had because it’s clearly a homicide, and reservation homicides are the FBI’s problem. You’re just interested because it’s an interesting puzzle.” To which he would have said: “Yes. You’re right. Now tell me why he was put under those chamisa bushes when it was so tough to get him there, carrying him all the way down the railroad tracks, and explain the Yeibichai note.” And Emma would have said something like, “They wanted the body seen from the train and reported and found, or they stopped the train and put him off.”
But Leaphorn couldn’t imagine what Emma would have said about the Yeibichai and Agnes Tsosie. He felt the oíd, painful, overwhelming need to talk to her. To see her sitting in that old brown chair, working on one of those endless making - something - for - somebody’s - baby projects which always kept her hands busy while she thought about whatever problem he’d presented her. A year now, a little more than a year, since she had died. This part of it seemed to get no better.
He turned off the television, put on his coat, and walked out on the porch. It was still snowing a little—just an occasional dry flake. Enough to declare the end of autumn. Inside again, he got his winter jacket from the closet, dropped it on the sofa, turned on the TV again, and sat down. Okay, Emma, he thought, how about the missing dentures? They don’t just pop out when one is struck. They’re secured. He’d told the pathologist he was curious about those missing false teeth and the man had done some checking during the autopsy. There was not just one question, the doctor had said, but two. The gums showed the victim secured his teeth with a standard fixative. Therefore either the fellow had been killed while his teeth were out, or they had been removed after his death. In light of the way the man was dressed the first seemed improbable. So why remove the teeth? To avoid identification of the victim? Possibly. Would Emma have any other ideas? The second question was exactly the sort which intrigued Leaphorn.
“I didn’t find any sign of any of those gum diseases, or those jawbone problems, which cause dentists to remove teeth. Everything was perfectly healthy. There was some sign of trauma. The upper right molars, upper left incisor, had been broken in a way that caused some trauma to the bone and left resulting bone lesions.” That’s what the pathologist had said. He had looked up from his report at Leaphorn and said: “Do you know why his teeth are missing?”
So tell me, Emma, Leaphorn thought. If you’re so smart, you tell me why such a high class gentleman got his teeth extracted. And why.
As he thought it, he heard himself saying it aloud. He pushed himself out of the chair, embarrassed. “Crazy,” he said, also aloud. “Talking to myself.”
He switched off the TV again and retrieved the coat. It was colder but no longer snowing. He brushed the feathery deposit from the windshield with his sleeve, and drove.
Eastbound through Gallup, he saw Kennedy’s sedan parked at the Zuni Truck Stop Cafe. Kennedy was drinking tea.
“Sit,” Kennedy said, indicating the empty bench across the booth table from him. He extracted the tea bag from his cup and held it gingerly by its string. “Peppermint,” he said. “You ever drink this stuff?”
Leaphorn sat. “Now and then,” he said.
“What brings you off the reservation on such an inclement Saturday evening?”
What, indeed? Old friend, I am running from Emma’s ghost, Leaphorn thought. I am running from my own loneliness. I am running away from craziness.
“I’m still curious about your man with the pointed shoes,” Leaphorn said. “Did you ever get him identified?”
Kennedy gazed at him over the cup. “Nothing on the fingerprints,” he said. “I think I told you that. Nothing on anything else, either.”
“If you found his false teeth, could you identify him from that?”
“Maybe,” Kennedy said. “If we knew where he was from, then we could find out who made that sort of denture. Probably we could.”
The waitress appeared with a menu. “Just coffee,” Leaphorn said. He had no appetite this evening.
“My wife tells me coffee is giving me the night sweats. The caffeine is making me jumpy,” Kennedy said. “She’s got me off on tea.”