Empire of Dust (19 page)

"Maybe . . . I hope so," Tony said. "Did you know Ralph Begay?"

The bartender's face clouded. "He came in here, but I didn't know him. He just died. But maybe you know that. Who are you?"

Tony showed his National Science Foundation ID.

"We're working with the police investigating the death."

"Oh yeah? Why? Something funny about it?"

"Should there be?"

The bartender shrugged. "Hey, drunks are dying all the time. Liver, heart, you name it." Apparently the man hadn't heard about the mummification, Tony thought. It hadn't been in the newspapers.

"And you help them right along, don't you?" Miriam said to the man. Her voice was pinched and angry.

The bartender looked at her in disgust. "Hey, excuse me, but alcohol sales are legal, okay? You don't like it, go tell your congressman, don't bust my balls."

"When's the last time you let an Indian walk out of here drunk, jiggling his pickup truck keys?" she responded.

"I don't
do
that! They have enough, I don't serve 'em!"

"Oh yeah, you're a real philanthropist, aren't you?" Miriam growled. Tony was amazed at the change that had come over her.

"Look, lady," the bartender snarled back, "why don't you just shove your bleeding heart up your—"

Tony's arm shot out and grabbed the bartender by the front of his shirt. He heard cloth rip as he pulled the man across the bar so that their faces were only inches apart. "Let's try and be civil, okay?" Tony said in a low voice.

The man's face flushed under his deep tan, and his right hand fumbled under the bar. Tony grabbed it, pushed it back, and was rewarded with the sound of a cut-off baseball bat clattering to the floor behind the bar.

Then he released the man and held up both hands. "No need for that," Tony said, moving his hand slowly to his hip pocket and taking out his wallet, from which he withdrew two fifty-dollar bills. "That's for the shirt," he said, dropping the first one on the bar. "And that's for civility," he said as he put the second on top of the first. "I apologize. My colleague and I can get a little hot tempered. Now, can you tell me anything about Ralph Begay?"

The money seemed to mollify the bartender. He stuck it in his pocket, straightened his torn shirt, and gestured to the men in cowboy hats, who had stood up menacingly, to sit back down. Then he cocked his head at Tony. "He came in here for years, never talked to me except to order drinks. He always had beer. Then, after he hooked up with that writer guy, he bought whisky."

"You mean John Reece?" Tony asked. The bartender nodded. "Does he come in here often?"

"No. Every few months. I think he kind of cruises the bars. Gathering, whaddyacallit, information?"

"Local color," Miriam said, her voice hard. "Whatever."

"You ever hear what they were talking about?" Tony asked.

"I don't eavesdrop."

"Anybody besides Reece particularly friendly with Begay?"

"No. The Indians didn't talk to him after he got pally with Reece. They don't like Reece."

"What a surprise," said Miriam.

"What is it with you?" the bartender said, glancing at Tony, who didn't move. "I mean, the guy writes books, the books bring tourists here, and the Indians sell their blankets and jewelry and shit, so what's wrong with that?"

"He exploits them," Miriam said. "He tells secrets they don't want known."

"Well, hey, there's a price for everything, isn't there? Welcome to the real world. I get to see it pretty good from here."

"Did Begay ever drink too much?" Tony asked, getting back on track.

"Almost always. He didn't drive, so I let him drink a little more than the ones I know do. But when he got too plowed, I'd stop serving him. He'd just go on down the street then—there are some bars that keep selling until the Indians fall off their stools. I don't do that." He frowned at Miriam. "Believe it or not, honey. I don't care." Then he looked back at Tony. "You wanta know what Begay was like when he got really blotto, ask there."

Tony looked at the Indians at the table. "They know him?"

"If they did, they wouldn't tell you shit about him. Not even if you were Secretary of the Interior."

Tony tried anyway, but the Indians disavowed any knowledge of Ralph Begay. In whatever front they put up for the two Anglos, Begay had never existed.

Outside, Miriam looked sheepishly at Tony. "I'm sorry I blew up in there. That guy probably wasn't as bad as some. Still, liquor's a big problem with the Indians, and the blame has to go right down the line. He was right about one thing." She gestured to an Indian sleeping on the sidewalk twenty yards away. He could have been anywhere from thirty to fifty. "Drunks are dying all the time. And nobody's doing anything about it."

Miriam removed a camera with a telephoto lens and took several pictures of the man. "Looks like
you
are," Tony said.

She shook her head sadly. "
Arizona Highways
doesn't run photos like that."

They checked all of the bars for two blocks on either side of the Wet Moccasin, but the story was always the same. The bartenders knew who Ralph Begay was, but nothing more about him than the fact that he was usually drunk by the time he left their establishment. None of the Indians admitted knowing him, and the white patrons, although they recognized the name, had never spoken to him.

They had a late lunch in a back booth of one of the bars that served sandwiches. After they ordered, Tony noticed tears in Miriam's eyes. His hand sought hers before he'd even realized it. "What is it?" he asked, surprised at finding himself so concerned. "What's wrong?"

She gripped his hand gently. "I'm sorry," she said, her voice choking. "It's just that . . . they're such good people, the Navajo. And to see them the way they are here, it just gets to me. And we haven't even seen what's happened to a lot of the younger ones, drugs and gangs . . ." She shook her head. "I love this country so much, but I hate what's happened to the people whose country it was—and still
is
."

"I'm sorry," Tony said, thinking of the drunks and the town of Red Water. There were places in New York City that rivaled it for poverty, but the racial inequality seemed almost genocidal.

They talked for a long time about the problems of the Indians, and let go of each other's hand only when the food came. But even as he ate, he couldn't help looking at her as she took small bites of her sandwich. "You eat like a bird," he said. "My mother used to say that, but I never understood it till now."

"I think I must have a small stomach. It doesn't take much to fill me up. Where do your parents live?"

"They both passed away," he said.

"I'm sorry."

"They had a lot of good years together. But they . . . couldn't live apart. Mom didn't last too long after Dad died."

"It must be wonderful to have a relationship like that—even if there's pain at the end. Are you married?"

"No. Never. How about yourself?"

"Never found the right man. They all wanted more than I could give." She thought for a moment. "Or less, if that makes sense."

He nodded, thinking of some of the women with whom he had been involved, and of how they wanted to give him more love than he wanted to take. He had never wanted to make anyone a widow.

Why then did he find himself thinking that he had never wanted anything more than the love of the woman sitting with him now, this gentle, compassionate, yet fiery and dedicated woman?

"Haven't you ever used your . . . special abilities to find the right someone?" Tony asked her.

"No. I've tried, but it doesn't seem to work for something like that. I just have to take my chances like everybody else."

Take chances. Everybody had to, and even if his chances gambled with life and death, why should that stop him from loving? It wasn't fair, not to him, not to the women he might have loved.

Wait a minute
, he thought.
Don't be so damn ready to hold out your heart
. He had done that only once before, and it had scarred him and killed another.

It had been in Brussels, nine years earlier. She had been his contact. He had always made it a strict rule not to get involved with fellow agents, but during their first meeting, he knew that she was the person for whom he had been searching all his life, and he could tell she felt the same way. By their second meeting, his first true love affair began, so strong that he never thought about how it would end.

It had ended in blood, two weeks later. They were leaving her flat when two men on a motor scooter drove by, one of them firing a machine pistol. Tony recovered, but the woman died, and he vowed that he would never know such pain again. He had never loved a woman since.

"Sometimes it costs a lot to love," he said, as much to himself as to Miriam. "There are a lot of sad endings."

"They don't all have to be sad."

"Don't they? Nobody lives happily ever after. There's always a widow or a widower, a dearly departed and a mourner."

"But living how many years alone, compared to all the happy years spent together? Fear shouldn't stop love. That's surrendering to death years before it comes."

She was right, but he couldn't tell her that death could claim him anytime, turning her happy years into months or even weeks. Still, for him to deny love was like denying life itself. And who was he to do that?

He took her hand again, and the look in her eyes told him how she felt.

He spent the rest of the day in a waking dream, holding her hand as they walked through Gallup's streets. Still, he fully performed his assignments, checking the air services in town to discover that two of them rented helicopters, but that they had all been in hangars on the nights in question.

At Miriam's hotel, Tony thanked her for coming with him, then added, "Maybe I could call you tonight—depending on what Dr. Kelly has planned for our team."

"I'd like that," she nodded.

Tony glanced at the desk clerk, whose face was buried behind a newspaper, then at the two Indians still sitting on the lobby sofa, and decided not to try a kiss. "Goodbye," he said, and walked out. He looked back several times, just to see her standing there smiling at him, her face alive and glowing, while the Indians only stared at him, their expressions unreadable.

A
t dinner that night, Tony reported on his failure to turn up anything at either the bars or the air service centers, and Laika and Joseph told him about their visits to the two sites.

"I sent the soil samples to the lab," Joseph said. "They'll have the results in the morning."

"What do you expect to find?" Tony asked.

Joseph shrugged. "If there was enough traction, maybe traces of vulcanized rubber from tires. If there isn't any, it won't prove that tires
didn't
make the tracks, though."

"So what's on the schedule for tomorrow?" Tony asked, hoping that there were no plans to leave the Gallup area.

"We still don't know what killed Begay or the hiker," Laika said. "So we keep investigating. Tomorrow I want you two to take Yazzie and hit the towns near where Begay was found dead, see if there's anyone who might have seen him on those back roads, and if they did, find out who or what else they saw. While you do that, I'm going to visit a professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico over in Albuquerque and learn what I can about mummification."

Laika paid cash when the bill arrived, and they drove back to the motel and went to their separate rooms. It was 9:30, and Tony called Miriam at her hotel and asked her if she wanted to meet him somewhere.

She was quiet for a moment, and then said, "Why don't I just come over there?"

He felt his heart start to beat faster. "Sure, that'd be fine," he said, and offered to drive over and get her, but she said she would take a cab.

After he hung up, Tony brushed his teeth and took a quick shower, then dressed in clean clothes. He wished his heart would stop beating so fast. After all, she was just one more woman. After tonight he would probably never see her again.

There was a knock at the door. Tony checked his hair one last time, and opened it. Miriam stood there, dressed with a simplicity that only enhanced her natural beauty. She was wearing a white linen blouse with a scoop neckline, and a dark red skirt of Indian design that stopped just below her knees. Her legs were bare, and her small feet wore brown leather sandals. Her only jewelry was a gold chain around her neck, from which hung a gold cross, an inch wide at the crosspiece. Her ever-present backpack was slung over her left shoulder.