“Yes,” Janet said. “I thought of that. That’s probably it.”
“I’d offer you some refreshments if I had any,” Chee said. “In Farmington, in a seventy-five-dollar hotel, if they had anything that expensive, you’d have a little refrigerator with all those snacks and drinks in it. Or you’d have room service.”
“In Washington that comes in the three-hundred-dollar-per-day hotels,” Janet said. “But I don’t want anything. I want to know what you think of Highhawk. What do you think of all of this?”
“He struck me as slightly bent,” Chee said. “Big, good-looking belagaana, but he wants to be a Navajo. Or that’s the impression I got. And I guess he dug up those bones he’s accused of digging up to be a militant Indian.”
Janet Pete looked at him, thoughtfully. “Do you know anything that connects him with the Tano Pueblo?”
“Tano? No. Really, I know damned little. I just got stuck with the job of taking the federal warrant and going out to the Yeibichai and arresting the guy. They don’t tell you a damn thing. If they don’t give you the ‘armed and dangerous’ speech, then you presume he’s not armed or dangerous. Just pick him up, take him in, let the federals handle the rest of it. It was a fugitive warrant. You know, flight to avoid. But I heard he was wanted sdmewhere East for desecrating a graveyard, vandalism. So forth.“
Janet sat with her lower lip caught between her teeth, looking troubled.
“Jim,” she said, “I think I’m being used.”
“Oh?”
“Maybe it’s just I’m the token Navajo and Highhawk wanted a Navajo lawyer. That would make sense. Washington is lousy with lawyers but not with Navajo lawyers.”
“Guess not.”
“But I’ve got a feeling,” she added. She shook her head, got up, tried to pace. The room was, by Chee’s quick estimate, about nine feet wide and sixteen feet long, with floor space deleted for a bathroom and a closet. Pacing was not just impractical, it was impossible. Janet sat down again. “This Highhawk, he’s a publicity hound. Oh, that’s not really fair. Just say he knows how to make his point with the press and he knows the press is important to him and the press loves him. So when he waived extradition and came back here, he said he wanted a Navajo lawyer and that made the Post.” She paused, glanced at Chee. “You know me,” she said.
Chee had known her on the reservation as a lawyer on the staff of the Dinebeiina Nahiilna be Agaditahe, which translated loosely into English as “People Who Talk Fast and Help the People Out” but was more often called the DMA or Tribal Legal Aid, and which had earned a hard-nosed reputation for defending the underdog. In fact, Chee had gotten to know her when she nailed him for trying to keep one of her clients locked up in the San Juan County jail longer than Janet thought was legal or necessary.
“Knowing you, I bet you volunteered,” Chee said.
“Well, I called him,” she said. “And we talked. But I didn’t make any commitments. I thought the firm wouldn’t like it.”
“Let’s see,” Chee said. “It’s Dalman, MacArthur, Fenix, and White, isn’t it? Or something like that. They sound like they’d be a little too dignified to be representing somebody who vandalizes graveyards.”
“Dalman, MacArthur, White, and Hertzog,” Janet said. “And yes, it’s a dignified outfit. And it doesn’t handle criminal defense cases. I thought they’d want to avoid Highhawk. Especially when the case is going to make the Post every day and the client is a notorious grandstander. And I didn’t think John would like it either. But it didn’t work that way.“
“No,” Chee said. John was John McDermott. Professor John McDermott. Ex-professor. Ex-University of Arizona law faculty. Janet Pete’s mentor, faculty advisor, boss, lover, father figure. The man she’d quit her job with the Navajo Tribe to follow to Washington. Ambitious, successful John. “It doesn’t sound like John’s sort of thing.”
“It turned out I was wrong about that,” Janet said. “John brought it up. He asked me if I’d like to represent Highhawk.”
Chee made a surprised face.
“I said I didn’t think the firm would like it. He said it would be fine with the firm. It would demonstrate its social consciousness.”
Chee nodded.
“Bullshit,” Janet said. “Social consciousness!”
“Why then?”
Janet started to say something but stopped. She got up again and walked to the window and looked out. Rain streaked the glass. In the office across the street the lights were on. A man was standing at his window looking across at them. Chee noticed he had his coat off. Vest and tie but no coat. It made Chee feel more cheerful.
“You have an idea why, don’t you?” Chee said.
“I don’t know,” Janet said to the window.
“You could guess,” Chee said.
“I can guess,” she agreed. “We have a client. The Sunbelt Corporation. It’s a big factor in real estate development, apartment complexes, that sort of thing. They bought a ranch outside Albuquerque. From what little I know about it, I think they have some sort of big development planned there. She turned away from the window, sat down again, stared at her hands. “Sunbelt is interested in where an interstate bypass is located. It makes a lot of difference in their land values. From what I hear the route Sunbelt favors runs across Tano Pueblo land. The Tano tribal council is split on whether to sell the right of way. The traditionals say no; the progressives see economic development, money.” She glanced up at Chee. “The old familiar story.”
“It does sound familiar,” Chee said. When she got around to it, Janet Pete would explain to him how all this involved Henry Highhawk, and her being followed. It was still raining outside. He looked at the man in the tie and vest in the window across the street who seemed to be looking at him. Funny town, Washington.
“They’re having their tribal election sometime this winter,” Janet said. “Youngish guy named Eldon Tamana is a contender against one of the old guard. Tamana favors granting the right of way.” There was another long pause.
“Good chance of winning?” Chee asked.
“I’d guess not,” Janet said. She turned and looked at him.
“I’m getting to be like a white man,” Chee said. “I’m getting in a hurry for you to tell me what this is all about.”
“I’m not sure I know myself. What I know is that the Smithsonian seems to have in its collection a Tano fetish. It’s a figure representing one of their Twin War Gods. Somehow Tamana found out about it, and I think he knew John at Arizona, and he came to John to talk about how to get it returned.”
Janet hesitated, looked down at her hands.
“I’d think that would be fairly simple,” Chee said. “You’d have the Tano tribal council adopt a resolution asking for it back—or maybe have it come from the elders of the kiva society that owned the fetish. Then you’d ask the Smithsonian to return it, and they’d take it under advisement, and do a study to find out where they’d got their hands on it, and after about three years you’d either get it back or you wouldn’t.”
“I don’t think that would work. Not for Tamana,” Janet said, still studying her hands.
“Oh?”
Janet sighed. “Did I tell you he’s running for a position on the tribal council? I guess he wants to just walk in and present the War God, sort of prove he’s a young man who can get things done while the old-timers just talk about it. I doubt if the council knows the museum has the fetish.”
“Ah,” Chee said. “Are you representing Sunbelt interests in this? I guess Sunbelt has an interest in getting Tamana elected.”
“I’m not,” Janet said. “John is. John is the law firm’s Southwestern expert. He gets the stuff which involves public land policy, Indians, uranium, water rights, all the cases like that.”