Sacred Clowns (15 page)

EVEN BEFORE he had finished reading Chee’s memo, Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn had come to a couple of conclusions. The first was that he had guessed right about Chee. He was young, and he still had the crazy idea that he could be both a
hataalii
and a tribal cop simultaneously, and he had a tendency to do things his own way. But he was smart. And in this job, being smart was something you needed to be a lot. The second conclusion was that he should clear up this question of the link between Eric Dorsey and Francis Sayesva now, and the place to start was exactly in the unlikely place that Chee’s memo had suggested.

He picked up the cap he’d just taken off and headed for the door. The first step was to talk to Dilly Streib. Streib would probably still be lingering over his breakfast at the Navajo Nation Inn, where Leaphorn had just left him. He’d get Dilly to make the proper calls to assure that no jurisdictional toes were bruised. Then he’d make the long drive to Tano. Perhaps Dilly would like to go along.

Dilly wouldn’t. He called the Albuquerque FBI office, and got the proper people at the BIA Law and Order Division to set things up across the jurisdictional boundaries. But as far as making the trip was concerned, he told Leaphorn, “Sorry, I got other sheep to shear.

“Maybe you’ve got the time to solve problems for people over in the Albuquerque office. Not me,” Streib said. “Besides, my tailbone’s hurting from all the driving we’ve been doing.”

So, a little before noon, Leaphorn arrived at Tano, stopped at the pueblo administrative office, asked appropriate questions, and got directions to the house of Teddy Sayesva.

Teddy Sayesva showed no enthusiasm for giving a Navajo policeman the fifth repetition, as he put it, “of what damn little I know about how my brother got killed.” But the Tano culture’s demand for hospitality quickly overpowered his irritation. He prepared coffee in the pot on the cookstove, and then perched stiffly on the edge of a kitchen chair—a small, thin man with a burr haircut and wire-rimmed glasses that looked too youthful for a face that was lined and tired. No, he hadn’t been at home when his nephew had come to see his brother Francis. He was a member of a kachina society and had duties to take care of at the kiva society. Except for the boy’s visit, which he hadn’t been home to witness, he could think of nothing unusual happening that evening.

He recited what had happened as if he’d memorized it. Francis had driven in from his home in Albuquerque early in the afternoon. As always during ceremonials, he used Teddy’s place as his home base. At supper he’d seemed preoccupied, maybe worried, but Teddy presumed that was because he had to go the next week to testify before a federal grand jury. Teddy paused after mentioning that and glanced at Leaphorn to see if it needed explanation. It didn’t. Leaphorn had read of that in the FBI report. It seemed to involve an auditing technicality in a banking case with no connection to this homicide.

Leaphorn nodded. Teddy resumed his recitation.

Teddy had left for the preceremonial meeting at his kiva. When he got home, Francis was in bed, sound asleep. He was still asleep when Teddy had left the next morning before dawn for prayers at the kiva.

“I didn’t have any more chance to talk to him,” Teddy said, looking down at his hands as he said it. “The last time I saw Francis he was sleeping.” He pointed into the next room. “Sleeping in that bed there. Where we both used to sleep when we were boys.”

“That would be a hard loss,” Leaphorn said. He thought of telling the man of Emma’s death, comparing the loss of the wife of your lifetime to the loss of a brother. But he could see no consolation in that. For either of them. Instead he said:

“The FBI agent’s report indicates that you had no idea what your nephew brought over here that night to give to Francis. Is that correct?”

“No idea,” Teddy Sayesva said. “The man told me it was supposed to be something long and narrow and wrapped in a newspaper. Like I said, I wasn’t here when Delmar came with it. And I didn’t see anything like that when I got back from the kiva. In fact, I didn’t see anything different at all.”

He gestured, taking in the small, cluttered room. “Where would you put something in here where I wouldn’t notice it? Right here in my own house. Anyplace he might have put it, we’ve looked. We didn’t find anything.”

“We think it might have been something made of wood. Of a heavy dark wood,” Leaphorn said.

“Oh,” Teddy Sayesva said. His tone indicated that this interested him.

“Your nephew said this object, whatever it was, had religious significance,” Leaphorn added. “That it had something to do with the ceremonial.”

“Delmar told you that?” Sayesva’s expression showed his shock. “He shouldn’t—” He let the sentence hang.

Leaphorn cleared his throat. “Actually, he told the officer that he couldn’t talk about what was in the package. He said he couldn’t talk about it at all because he was not supposed to talk about anything involving his religion to anyone not initiated into his kiva.”

“Oh,” Teddy Sayesva said. He looked relieved. “That’s right. He couldn’t talk about it if it concerned his religious duties.”

“And he didn’t talk about it,” Leaphorn said. “When the BIA officer told him he would have to take him in to Albuquerque to be questioned by the FBI if he didn’t tell them what it was, then Delmar ran away.”

Sayesva nodded, approving both Delmar’s action and this Navajo’s understanding of it. He got up, walked quickly to the door, opened it, and stood for a moment looking out into the cold autumn sunlight. A pickup truck rolled down the alley past the porch. Teddy Sayesva waved, and shouted something unintelligible to those who don’t speak the language of Tano. Then he looked up and down the street again, shut the door, and sat down.

“You’re Navajo,” he said. “Do you have a wife from any of the pueblos? Are any of your family married into our people?”

Leaphorn said no.

“I will have to tell you a little bit about our religion then,” Sayesva said. “Nothing secret.” He produced a wry smile. “Just former secrets—things that the anthropologists have already written about.”

He got up, poured coffee from the steaming pot, handed a mug to Leaphorn, and sat again.

“You know my brother was the leader of our koshare society. Do you know about the koshares?”

“A little,” Leaphorn said. “I’ve watched them at kachina dances. The clowns, with the striped body paint, making people laugh. I know their duties are more than just to entertain.”

“In our pueblo, and in some of the others, men who have jobs in towns and live away from us can’t be members of the most sacred societies, the kachina societies. They can’t spend enough time in the kivas. So they become koshares, and that is sacred too, but in a different way.” He paused, seeking a way to explain. “To outsiders, they look like clowns and what they do looks like clowning. Like foolishness. But it is more than that. The koshare have another role. I guess you could say they are our ethical police. It’s their job to remind us when we drift away from the way that was taught us. They show us how far short we humans are of the perfection of the spirits.”

He paused, an opportunity for a question. Leaphorn said, “An old friend of mine, a Hopi, told me their koshares are like policemen who use laughter instead of guns and scorn instead of jails.”

Sayesva nodded.

“You’ve been to kachina ceremonials,” he said. “Lots of Navajos like to come to them.”

“Sure,” Leaphorn agreed. “We are taught to respect your religion.”

“Then you’ve seen the koshare doing everything wrong, everything backward, being greedy, reminding us of how badly we behave. That’s the purpose. If you had been to this last one, you would have seen the clowns come in. They work with the clown team, to help teach the lesson. This time one of the clowns pulled in a wagon, and one of my cousins was there with the big billfold and the big dollars play-acting, pretending to buy sacred things. That’s what my brother had decided to warn the people about that day. Selling things they shouldn’t sell. What Delmar brought him in that package, I don’t know. But I think it must have been something to put into the little wagon. Something symbolic.”

Teddy Sayesva looked at Leaphorn over his glasses. Shrugged. Sipped his coffee.

“Something made of dark wood and silver?” Leaphorn said.

Sayesva looked up from his cup, shook his head, produced a wry smile. “Silver, too? Black wood and silver?”

“We think so. We found a form for casting something in metal. About this big.” Leaphorn made a small, round shape with his hands. “And with letters in it.”

“Found it where?”

“In the school crafts shop at Thoreau.”

“Where that man was killed?”

Leaphorn nodded. “Do you know what it was?”

Sayesva’s expression said he knew, and that the knowledge hurt. But he didn’t answer the question.

“Whatever it was, it seems to have been made in the shop that morning. We think Mr. Dorsey probably made it. We think it was taken about the time he was killed. Maybe before, maybe after, but about that time. A friend of Delmar’s says Delmar went to the shop about that time to pick up something the friend had made. When the friend came to pick up Delmar, Delmar had the package with him.”

Sayesva shook his head, rejecting what he was hearing. He looked very tired. “You think Delmar killed this teacher?”

Leaphorn shook his head. “We have a suspect in jail at Crownpoint,” he said. “He’s a Navajo named Eugene Ahkeah, a maintenance man at the school. He was seen around the school about the time of the homicide. A box full of items stolen from the shop turned up under his house.”

Sayesva looked relieved. “So you just want to know what was in the package?”

“Whatever you can tell us,” Leaphorn said.

“I guess it was the Lincoln Cane,” Sayesva said.

The Lincoln Cane.
It took only a second for Leaphorn’s memory to process that. President Lincoln had ordered ebony and silver canes made and sent them to the leaders of the New Mexico Indian pueblos during the dark days of the Civil War. They were intended, as Leaphorn remembered that episode in history, as a signal that Lincoln recognized tribal authority, and to reward them for their neutrality and to keep them neutral. One of the Spanish kings, probably King Charles if Leaphorn’s memory served, had done the same two hundred years earlier.

“Not the cane itself, of course,” Sayesva said. “I mean a copy of it.” He nodded, agreeing with his own guess. “I guess my brother had a replica made. I guess he must have sent Delmar to get it for him.”

Leaphorn waited. Teddy Sayesva was thinking, considering the implications of what he had concluded. Leaphorn gave him time to think. And then he said, “You think your brother had it put in the wagon? I heard that when the wagon was pulled around the plaza, past the crowd, the people quit laughing when it went by. I heard they got quiet. Serious.”

“Yes,” Sayesva said.

Leaphorn waited. “I thank you for what you’ve told me so far,” he said. “Now we know what we’re looking for. Sometimes that helps you find something, but it may not help this time. Whoever killed your brother may have taken it.”

Sayesva acknowledged that with an absent nod.

“Your brother was killed for some reason. Could it be because he put the cane in the wagon? Would that suggest that it was being sold?”

Sayesva rose. “I don’t think I know anything else to tell you,” he said. He moved toward the door but stopped short of opening it. “No,” he said. “No. Francis wouldn’t have got someone to make a copy of that cane.” He shook his head, hand still on the doorknob.

Leaphorn, who had been rising, sat down again.

“Why not?” he asked.

For a moment Leaphorn thought Teddy Sayesva hadn’t heard the question. He waited, aware of the autumn smells in this small, closed kitchen—the aroma of chili drying somewhere, of cornhusks, of sacks of pinto beans and onions.

Sayesva left the door and sat down across the table. “Why not? Well, he and Bert Penitewa—Bert’s the governor—they were friends. They disagreed on a lot of things but they respected one another. He wouldn’t insult the governor like that. Putting that cane in the wagon like it was for sale was the worst kind of insult.”

“Officer Chee said the wagon was full of things to be sold,” Leaphorn said. “He thought it was sort of a general protest against people selling artifacts with religious value.”

“Sure,” Sayesva said. “The koshare have done that before. Warned against selling sacred things, I mean. But the cane was another matter. There aren’t any rules, exactly, about what the clowns can do, or what they can ridicule. But they do follow traditions. And traditionally, the clowns don’t get involved in politics and they don’t get personally insulting. Putting that cane in there was like accusing Bert of being willing to sell it—and God knows what some collector would pay for something that old and sent out by Abraham Lincoln himself. It would be a personal insult because the governor is the keeper of the cane. A sort of a sacred trust.”

“So that broke with tradition? I mean putting the cane in the wagon?”

Sayesva nodded. “Everybody’s been talking about it. Maybe as much about that as about what happened to my brother. Francis was a valuable man. He didn’t do foolish things. People wonder what he was telling them.”