But it was interesting. Flaky as he seemed, Highhawk was an artist. Chee noticed a half-finished Mudhead figure on the table and picked it up. The traditional masks, as Chee had seen them at Zuni Shalako ceremonials, were round, clay-colored, and deformed with bumps. They represented the idiots born after a daughter of the Sun committed incest with her brother. Despite the limiting conventions of little round eyes and little round mouth, Highhawk had carved into the small face of this figurine a kind of foolish glee. Chee put it down carefully and reinspected the kachinas on the shelf. Had Highhawk made them, too? Chee checked. Some of them, probably. Some looked too old and weathered for recent manufacture. But perhaps Highhawk’s profession made him skilled in aging, too.
It was then he noticed the sketches. They were stacked on the top level of the roll-top desk, done on separate sheets of heavy artist’s paper. The top one showed a boy, a turkey with its feathers flecked with jewels, a log, smoke rising from it as it was burned to hollow it into a boat. The setting was a riverbank, a cliff rising behind it. Chee recognized the scene. It was from the legend of Holy Boy, the legend reenacted in the Yeibichai ceremony. It showed the spirit child, still human, preparing for his journey down the San Juan River with his pet turkey. The artist seemed to have captured the very moment when the illness which was to paralyze him had struck the child. Somehow the few lines which suggested his naked body also suggested that he was falling, in the throes of anguish. And above him, faintly in the very air itself, there was the blue half-round face of the spirit called Water Sprinkler.
The sound of Highhawk's laugh came from the adjoining room, and Janet Pete's earnest voice. Chee sorted through the other sketches. Holy Boy floating in his hollow log, prone and paralyzed, with the turkey running on the bank beside him—neck and wings outstretched in a kind of frozen panic; Holy Boy, partially cured but now blind, carrying the crippled Holy Girl on his shoulders; the two children, hand in hand, surrounded by the towering figures of Talking God, Growling God, Black God, Monster Slayer, and the other yei—all looking down on the children with the relentless, pitiless neutrality of the Navajo gods toward mortal men. There was something in this scene—something in all these sketches now that he was aware of it—that was troubling. A sort of surreal, off-center dislocation from reality. Chee stared at the sketches, trying to understand. He shook his head, baffled.
Aside from this element, he was much impressed both by Highhawk’s talent and by the man’s knowledge of Navajo metaphysics. The poetry of the Yeibichai ceremonial usually used didn’t include the role of the girl child. Highhawk had obviously done his homework.
The doorbell rang, startling Chee. He put down the sketch and went to the office door. Highhawk was talking to someone at the front door, ushering him into the living room.
It was a man, slender, dark, dressed in the standard uniform of Washington males.
“As you can see, Rudolfo, my lawyer is always on the job,” Highhawk was saying. The man turned and bowed to Janet Pete, smiling.
It was Rudolfo Gomez, Mr. Bad Hands.
“I’ve come at a bad time,” Bad Hands said. “I didn’t notice Miss Pete’s car outside. I didn’t realize you were having a conference.”
Jim Chee stepped out of the office. Bad Hands recognized him instantly, and with a sort of controlled shock that seemed to Chee to include not just surprise but a kind of dismay.
“And this is Jim Chee,” Highhawk said. “You gentlemen have met before. Remember? On the reservation. Mr. Chee is the officer who arrested me. Jim Chee, this is Rudolfo Gomez, an old friend.”
“Ah, yes,” Bad Hands said. “Of course. This is an unexpected pleasure.”
“And Mr. Gomez is the man who put up my bail,” Highhawk said to Chee. “An old friend.”
Bad Hands was wearing his gloves. He made no offer to shake hands. Neither did Chee. It was not, after all, a Navajo custom.
“Sit down,” Highhawk said. “We were talking about my preliminary hearing.”
“I’ve come at a bad time,” Bad Hands said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“No. No,” Janet Pete said. “We’re finished. We were just leaving.” She gave Chee the look.
“Right,” Chee said. “We have to go.”
A cold wind out of the northwest had blown away the drizzle. They walked down the steps from Highhawk’s porch and passed a blue Datsun parked at the sidewalk. It wasn’t the car Bad Hands had been driving at the Agnes Tsosie place, but that had been three thousand miles away. That one was probably rented. “What’d you think?” Janet Pete asked.
“I don’t know,” Chee said. “He’s an interesting man.”
“Gomez or Highhawk?”
“Both of them,” Chee said. “I wonder what happened to Gomez’s hands. I wonder why Highhawk calls him an old friend. But I meant Highhawk. He’s interesting.”
“Yeah,” Janet said. “And suicidal. He’s flat determined to go to jail.” They walked a little. “Stupid son of a bitch,” she added. “I could get him off with some community service time and a suspended sentence.”
“You know anything about this Gomez guy?” Chee asked.
“Just what I told you and what Highhawk said. Old friends. Gomez posted his bail.”
’They’re not old friends,“ Chee said. ”I told you that. I saw them meet at that Yeibichai where I arrested him. Highhawk had never seen the guy before.“
“You sure of that? How do you know?”
“I know,” Chee said.
Janet put her hand on his arm, slowed. “There he is,” she said in a tiny voice. “That car. That’s the man who’s been following me.”
The car was parked across the street from them. An aging Chevy two-door, its medium color hard to distinguish in the shadows.
“You sure?” Chee said.
“See the radio antenna? Bent like that? And the dent in the back fender? It’s the same car.” Janet was whispering. “I really looked at it. I memorized it.”
What to do? His inclination was to ignore this situation, to simply walk past the car and see what happened. Nothing would happen, except Janet would think he was a nerd. He felt uneasy. On the reservation, he would have simply trotted across the street and confronted the driver. But confront him with what? Here Chee felt inept and incompetent. This entire business seemed like something one saw on television. It was urban. It seemed dangerous but it was probably just silly. What the devil would the Washington Police Department recommend in such a circumstance?
They were still walking very slowly. “What should we do?” Janet asked.
“Stay here,” Chee said. “I’ll go see about it.”
He walked diagonally across the street, watching the dim light reflecting from the driver’s-side window. What would he do if the window started down? If he saw a gun barrel? But the window didn’t move.
Beside the car now, Chee could see a man behind the steering wheel, looking at him.
Chee tapped on the glass. Wondering why he was doing this. Wondering what he would say.
Nothing happened. Chee waited. The man behind the wheel appeared to be motionless.
Chee tapped on the window again, rapping the glass with the knuckles of his right hand.
The window came down, jerkily, squeaking.
“Yeah?” the man said. He was looking up at Chee. A small face, freckled. The man had short hair. It seemed to be red. “Whaddaya want?”
Chee wanted very badly to get a better look at the man. He seemed to be small. Unusually small. Chee could see no sign that he was armed, but that would be hard to tell in the darkness of the front seat.
“The lady I’m with, she thinks you’ve been following her,” Chee said. “Any reason for her to think that?”
“Following her?” The man leaned forward toward the window, looking past Chee at Janet Pete waiting across the street. “What for?”