Coyote Waits (25 page)

“So Pinto found it for you?”

“We brought him here. He looked in his crystals. Put ’em on the ground, used pollen, did some chanting and looked into them and told us where to climb up into here. He was very vague about it at first but Tagert poured the whiskey into him. Loosened him up.”

“So why did you kill Tagert? He wouldn’t give you the other five hundred bucks?”

Redd was staring at him. “You said the boy saw me shoot Tagert? That’s right?”

Chee nodded.

“You bastard,” Redd said. “No he didn’t.” He laughed. Relieved. Delighted.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I didn’t kill the son-of-a-bitch. I didn’t shoot Tagert. The boy couldn’t have seen that. I’ll bet he didn’t see a damned thing.”

“He saw you,” Chee said, but Redd wasn’t listening.

“I do believe this is going to work out after all,” Redd said, half to himself. He stepped over Tagert’s body, looked down at it.

“I’ll tell you why I should have shot him, though. Not for any five hundred dollars.” He poked Tagert’s shoulder with the toe of his boot. “For lots of money.”

The pistol was now pointed directly at Chee and Redd was looking at him over it.

“Do you know about the robbery? The one these two bandidos were running from?”

“A train robbery, I think. Up in Utah, wasn’t it?” Chee asked. But he was asking himself what Redd meant. That he hadn’t shot Tagert. If he hadn’t, who had?

“Right,” Redd said. “Not much money in it, and they lost most of that because the third man in. the bunch was carrying it and he got shot. But the train was making stops at all the little post offices out here, stocking them up with stamps and stuff. There were just twenty or thirty silver dollars and some five-dollar gold pieces in the bag they had. But there were a dozen or so packages of stamps. You know what that means?”

Chee was remembering the stamp collector’s book he’d seen in Redd’s house.

“I’d guess it means a lot of money,” he said.

“A lot of money! Dozens of sheets of uncancelled stamps. All kinds. I’m no stamp man but I looked some of them up. Five-cent William McKinleys worth like four hundred dollars for a block for four. Ten-cent Louisiana Purchase memorials worth eight hundred bucks for a block of four. Some of those one-centers worth over a hundred bucks apiece. I didn’t add it all up, but we’re talking about three or four hundred thousand dollars.”

“Lot of money,” Chee said, but he was thinking about whether the old pistol Redd was pointing at him would work, about how the hell to get out of here. And he must not have sounded properly impressed.

“It may not sound like much to you, with a regular job. But if you’re starving your way through graduate school, it sounds like a hell of a lot,” Redd said. “It sounds like an escape from never having a dime and doing slave labor for bastards like this one.”

“What was the problem, then? Did Tagert want to keep it all?”

Redd laughed. “He didn’t need money. He had it. He needed fame. And getting even with the other historians who don’t agree he’s God. No. He was going to leave it all here — just like I found it for him. Then he was going to call in the authorities. Most especially he was going to call in somebody important from the US. Post Office. He wanted official certification that this mailbag and all in it came off that Colorado and Southern train.”

“Oh,” Chee said. “I guess I see. He wanted a solid connection between these bodies here and that identification of Cassidy as the train robber. To make those other historians eat crow.”

“I think he’d found some sort of identification on the body. And he measured it. Can you believe that? Laid it out straight as he could and measured it. He said Cassidy was five foot nine inches and so was the mummy with the mustache. He said Cassidy had a scar under one eye. And two deep scars on the back of his head. He claimed he found those, too, but the thing’s so dried-up I couldn’t tell.”

“I say it would be safe to say he’s Cassidy without all that. How you going to prove it isn’t?”

“You don’t know historians,” Redd said. “And Tagert’s a single-minded bastard. I told him what it would do — if he called in the authorities. The Post Office would claim the mailbags, and the stamps. Face value of those stamps to them, maybe a hundred dollars, and we lose a fortune.”

“What did you want to do?”

“Split it,” Redd said. “Just split it. Fifty-fifty. That would be fair. After all, he never could have found it without me.”

Chee was thinking, How about thirds? How about Ashie Pinto sitting out there under his tree with his bottle? You wouldn’t have found anything without Pinto. But he said: “What did Tagert say?”

“He just sneered at me. Said I had made a deal for a thousand and I had five hundred coming out of that.”

“So you shot him?”

“I didn’t shoot him. I grabbed the mailbag and it turns out he had a pistol in his coat pocket. He pulled it out. Said he would shoot me if I didn’t leave things alone.” Chee watched Redd’s face register surprise at this manufactured memory. “You know, I think he would have done it too.”

Play along, Chee thought. Play along. “I wouldn’t be surprised. What I’ve heard about him.”

Redd laughed. “No,” he said. “Talk about irony. Old Ashie shot him.”

Of course. And Nez, too. Lay the blame on old, drunk Ashie Pinto.

But Chee said: “Pinto. What’s ironic about that?”

After the first flurry, the snow had stopped. But now it began again, brushing Chee’s cheek with flakes and swirling them around the knees of Redd.

Redd had been thinking, not listening. Sorting things out in his mind. He motioned Chee with his pistol.

“Let me have your gun,” he said.

Chee shrugged. “No gun,” he said. “I’m off duty.”

“Don’t bull me,” Redd said. “You cops always carry guns.”

“No we don’t. I’m on convalescent leave.” He held up his left hand, displaying the wrappings. “Because of this.”

“You have a gun,” Redd said. “Lean up against that rock there. Use your good hand. I’ll see.”

“No gun,” Chee said. Which, unfortunately, was true. Chee’s pistol was where it always seemed to be when he wanted it — in the glove box of his truck.

Redd checked his pockets, his pant legs, the tops of his boots.

“Okay,” he said. “I noticed you looking at this old hogleg. If you’re thinking it won’t work, it will. I tried it.”

“What are you planning to do?” Chee asked. “You didn’t shoot anybody. So, why not turn yourself in?”

Redd had walked to the cleft in the basalt where he had hidden the saddlebag. He was pointing the pistol at Chee, reaching in, leaning against the stone, trying to give his fingers a grip on the canvas, eyes still on Chee, a sardonic grin on his face.

“Turn myself in for what?” he asked. He grunted as his fingers slipped off the canvas. “Damned thing’s jammed back in there,” he said. “I didn’t want somebody to happen in here and find it. Like whoever was watching.”

“Why didn’t you take it with you?” Chee asked. Every nerve was tense. When Redd pulled the bag out, that would be the time to make a run for it. He had ruled out jumping the man long ago. Redd outweighed him by forty pounds and had two good hands.

“Because that goddam cop car came rolling up. First it was Nez. And then you.” Redd pulled the arm out, empty-handed again. “I didn’t have time to decide what to do. I just wanted to get away from here.”

“Why burn him?” Chee’s voice was strained.

“That crazy bastard,” Redd said, and Chee presumed he meant Pinto — not Nez. He stared into the crevice, estimating distance. “I shouldn’t have pushed it in there so far,” he said, half to himself. “The cop was already dead. The fire — he was shooting . . . I don’t know what happened. Dealing with a drunk, I guess you could call it an accident. Everything that’s happened has been sort of accidental when you think about it.” He laughed. “Kismet,” he said. “Fate.”

“Fate,” Chee said. “Yeah. Blame it on old Coyote.”

“Like you and the girl coming out here the day I came back to pick up the mailbag. I figured the cops would find it and stake the place out. And when I finally decided that hadn’t happened and came out to get it, it was the same day you and that woman came out. So I thought I’d just leave it until after the trial. Get it when everything got cooled down and forgotten.”

While he talked, he was looking around for something to pry the saddlebag with. He looked at Chee’s stick and rejected it. “It had been here like almost a century. What’s another few months?”

“What did you mean, ironic that Pinto shot the professor?” Chee asked.

“Well, hell,” Redd said, and leaned into the cavity as far as he could reach. “I meant Tagert gave the old man the whiskey. Coaxed him. Had him smell it. Told him he’d brought a really sweet kind because he knew Pinto liked it sweet.” He laughed. “I think he put Nutrisweet in Scotch.” Redd raised his voice, mimicking Tagert. “’Just taste it. You don’t have to get drunk. Just take a taste.’ Just to make him drunk so he’d tell us more than he wanted to. When we were driving over to pick Pinto up, Tagert told me he did that. He said: ‘The old devil always tries to leave stuff out when you hire him to tell you something, but he can’t handle whiskey. So when he starts getting coy, I get him started drinking and once he’s drunk he tells me — ‘” Suddenly Redd grunted. He was leaning into the cleft, straining to reach. “Ah,” he said. “Now I got it.”

Just then the rattlesnake struck.

Redd jerked away from the rocks, gripping the saddlebag by some sort of reflex action. The great gray snake dangled, writhing, from the side of his neck, its fangs hooked through the neck muscles just below Redd’s left ear. Redd screamed, a terrified, gargling sound. He dropped the bag, grabbed the diamondback by its flat, triangular head, pulled it loose, and threw it back among the basalt boulders.

Chee wasted perhaps two seconds watching this — first too startled to move and then thinking Redd would drop the pistol. He didn’t. Chee ran.

Moving fast over rough country comes naturally to young men raised in a culture in which skill at running is both respected and useful. Within a minute, Chee was sure enough that Redd couldn’t find him, so he stopped, looked back and listened. It was snowing hard now, the flakes no longer tiny or dry. They stuck to the black rocks for long seconds before warmth from the stone converted them to water.

Redd wasn’t following him. Chee hadn’t really expected him to. Redd didn’t seem to know much about snakes but he’d know a rattlesnake when he saw one. And he’d probably know the neck was a hell of a poor place to get bitten. The venom had only a few inches to move to reach the brain. Redd would be running for help.

Chee climbed, looking for a place from which he could see something. He found one, and he saw Redd almost immediately despite the blowing snow. He was out of the ridge formation, running down the grassy slope toward the arroyo, and then up the arroyo. Probably to his Bronco II, Chee thought. He was still carrying the saddlebag.

Chee climbed down, found the path, and found his way through the snow to his pickup truck.

The driver’s-side window had been broken out.

Chee climbed in and tried the starter. Nothing happened. He pulled the hood release, climbed out, and found exactly what he had feared he’d find.

Redd had torn loose the wiring.

Chee stood beside the truck, creating a map of this landscape in his mind. Where would be the nearest telephone? Red Rock Trading Post. How far? Maybe fifteen miles, maybe twenty. If he walked all night he could be there about opening time tomorrow morning.

CHEE PUSHED THE up button of the elevator in the Albuquerque Federal Building a little after ten thirty. He looked like a man who had spent a sleepless night walking out in the snow, which he had. The minuscule amount of nighttime traffic that Navajo Route 33 normally carries had been cut to zero by the storm. A disappointing storm as it turned out, depositing less than two inches of snow across the arid Four Corners landscape, but enough to keep people at home. Chee had finally reached Red Rock Trading Post and got to a telephone a little after dawn. He’d called the station at Ship Rock and reported everything that had transpired. Then he called Mesa Airlines and reserved a seat on its nine A.M. flight. Finally he’d persuaded an early-rising Navajo rancher who’d stopped for gasoline to give him a ride to his trailer and from there to the airport. From the airport, he’d tried to call both Janet Pete and Hugh Dendahl, who was prosecuting this case for the U.S. attorney. Both of them had already left for the courthouse. He left messages for them both.

A U.S. marshal in a suit that had been big enough last year spotted Chee as he headed for the courtroom door.

“Where the hell you been?” he asked. “Dendahl has been looking for you.”

“He get my message?”

The marshal looked blank. “No message. He was making sure all his witnesses were ready.”

“He said he wouldn’t need me until this afternoon,” Chee said. “Maybe not then if they had trouble getting a jury.” Maybe not at all when he finds out about Redd, Chee was thinking. They’ll have to start over on this one.

“They got themselves a jury,” the marshal said. “Opening arguments this morning. He may need you right after lunch.”

“Well, I’m here,” Chee said.

The marshal was looking him over. No sign of approval.

“You live close?” he asked. “Maybe you could go home and clean up a little. Shave.”

“I live at Ship Rock,” Chee said. “Let me borrow your pen. And have you got a piece of paper?”

The marshal had a notebook in his coat pocket. Chee wrote hurriedly. Two almost identical notes to Janet Pete and Dendahl. He was thinking that as a witness they wouldn’t want him in the courtroom now. But what the hell. This trial wasn’t going to be held now anyway.

“Thanks,” he said, and handed the marshal his pen. “I have to get this note to Dendahl.”

The bailiff stopped him at the door.

Chee folded the notes, handed them to the bailiff. “This one goes to Dendahl,” he said. “This one to Janet Pete.”

Something was going on in the courtroom. The jury was being brought in. Janet, Dendahl, and another assistant district attorney who Chee didn’t know were huddled in front of Judge Downey. The judge looked irritated.