Sacred Clowns

“Mad?”

“He got furious. Hit his fist on the bench. Said ‘dirty lying son-of-a-bitch.’ Things like that. It was scary. Then he finished wrapping the cane and handed it to me and told me to take it and give it to the people at my pueblo. So I took it to Tano and gave it to Uncle Francis.”

“I’m going to send a patrol car out to your grandmother’s house to give you a ride,” Leaphorn said. “We want you to identify this guy for us.”

“Sure,” Delmar said. “Like in a police lineup?”

“Exactly,” Leaphorn said.

He called Dilly then. While he hadn’t really expected Dilly to be overjoyed with a speculative theory about Lincoln Canes, he did expect Dilly to be happy with a witness who could put a suspect at the scene of the crime, up close and personal. He was right.

“I’ll call Albuquerque,” Dilly said. “They’ll get the warrant and pick up Applebee. And we’ll take the kid off your hands, too.”

“Applebee might still be in Window Rock,” Leaphorn said.

“If he is, I’ll go get him myself,” Dilly said. “If he’s gone back to Santa Fe, they’ll handle it there.”

“You might tell ’em to hurry. Applebee might be feeling the walls closing in on him. He might run.”

“Run where?” Dilly said. “You been watching too many TV movies.”

True, Leaphorn thought. Bona fide criminals, the professionals, can run and get away. For a lawyer with all sorts of co

“If I were you I’d give Eugene Ahkeah a look at Applebee, too,” Leaphorn added. “I guess Ahkeah was drunk, but Applebee must have seen him since he picked him for the frame. And so Ahkeah-”

“Must have been around there, too,” Dilly said. “And before you suggest it, yes we will indeed dig out the various fingerprints we collected from the shop, and from the stuff under Ahkeah’s place, and check them against Applebee’s, and so forth.”

“And don’t forget to read him his rights.”

“What would we do without you,” Dilly said. “You ought to get into police work.”

“Now it’s your turn to do some detecting. You tell me who killed the koshare.”

“Applebee,” Streib said. “What do you mean? Doesn’t the cane tie ’em right together?”

“Applebee has a perfect alibi for the Sayesva homicide,” Leaphorn said. “He was in plain view out in the ceremonial crowd when it happened.”

“Oh,” Dilly said. A long pause. “Who do you think did it, then?”

“I think I’m glad that one happened outside my jurisdiction,” Leaphorn said. “You and I can let your Albuquerque office and the BIA cops worry about that one.”

Why waste time saying more than that? He had no evidence and no way he could think of to get any. Maybe it would surface, maybe it wouldn’t. But Leaphorn wanted to understand it. So he sat in Dorsey’s chair, surrounded by Dorsey’s silence, and Dorsey’s loneliness, and worked out how it had probably happened.

Asher Davis, the trader with the gilt-edged reputation, needed money. Or received an offer. Or saw an opportunity to make some really big money. Davis knew Dorsey. Cowboy Dashee had told Chee that Davis had gotten better prices for artifacts Dorsey wanted to sell for his old people. Davis would have won Dorsey’s approval. Now, would Dorsey make Davis an ebony cane with a cast-iron tip and a silver head with “A. Lincoln,” the date, and “Pojoaque Pueblo” inscribed upon it?

A sudden thought struck Leaphorn. The date that first cane was ordered would have been just a few days after Tano’s Governor Penitewa a

What had Davis told Chee about his relationship with Applebee? Roger had all the great ideas, but Davis was the one who got suspended. And from what else Davis had told Chee, that seemed to have been the pattern. Certainly, it fit with borrowing Davis’s credit card and leaving the poor bastard stuck with an abandoned rental car.

So the Pojoaque cane is made, delivered, and sold. Asher Davis puts his solid gold reputation on the gaming table. Nothing goes wrong. Not yet. It goes wrong later.

It goes wrong with the second cane. Applebee handled this deal himself. Why? Why put himself at any risk? Because phase two was going to destroy that reputation so precious to Davis. Public knowledge was necessary for the plot to work. Even Davis, stupid as he seemed, would have seen that. There would be a fake Lincoln Cane out in the public eye as part of a political scandal. And even if the plot failed, even if the scandal wasn’t good enough to ruin the governor, it would ruin Davis. Whether or not the press jumped on it, the word would spread like prairie fire through the small world of collectors.

But was there a way destroying Davis could be avoided? Leaphorn looked for an answer to that, and found it. The answer was no. Of course not. Davis, as usual, was expendable.

Obviously, the purpose was to discredit Governor Penitewa. From what Sayesva’s brother had said, something had already made Sayesva suspicious of the governor. Something that fit the pattern of Applebee’s behavior. Like the faked phone call to the principal about a gas leak. Like the anonymous tip that sent Lieutenant Toddy searching under Ahkeah’s home. Perhaps a faked letter. Perhaps an anonymous telephone call, God knows what. With the suspicion planted, Applebee intended to pick up the cane and deliver it to Sayesva as proof of whatever he had already caused Sayesva to believe. That the governor intended to sell the real cane and replace it with the copy? That, and maybe more.

Had Applebee only known it, Dorsey had done him a favor by sending the cane home with Delmar. That must have made it over-whelmingly persuasive to Sayesva. Here was a copy of the symbolic cane, handed him by his nephew, along with the account of an honest man tricked into making the fake and wanting no part of such thievery. It was easy enough to see why Sayesva was convinced that the governor was a traitor.

But back to Applebee. Why the homicide? Because the angry Dorsey left alive would mean Dorsey exposing Applebee’s plot, discrediting the Nature First campaign, discrediting Roger Applebee himself. And so Dorsey had to die. And that left Applebee home free as always.

Leaphorn yawned hugely and shifted in the chair. Last night he couldn’t sleep and now he was feeling it. He was sleepy. He glanced at his watch – a matter of habit since he had no place to go, no place to be, no one waiting for him. He stretched out his legs, yawned again, and thought of the odd nature of friendship. He had known of cases like Applebee and Davis before – partnerships of giver and taker with both parties seemingly needing their roles. He wondered how long Davis would be willing to give, and how much he’d let Applebee take. This time it must have been quite a shock.

Slowly and sleepily Leaphorn recreated it. Davis learning that someone had killed Dorsey and then seeing the fake cane in the clown’s wagon. He might not have seen Applebee’s hand in this at first. But he would have known the reputation he had treasured was as dead as Dorsey if the fake cane came to public light. He had to get the cane, had to bury it somewhere so deep it would never be found. So he went to get it, and Sayesva resisted, and Sayesva died. Well, maybe he’d get away with the murder. Unless Applebee took him down. And Applebee was a goner. The FBI was slow sometimes, and burdened by its bureaucracy, but once it got pointed in the right direction it got the job done. They’d match prints, and find forensic evidence, and maybe more witnesses, and Applebee would do enough years to add up to life. Davis? Maybe. Applebee would name him, no doubt of that. Try to make him the fall guy. And even if Applebee was touched by an uncharacteristic attack of honor, the federals already knew where to look. They could easily tie Davis to the first cane through the buyer and start with a circumstantial case. Maybe, given the Bureau’s forensic skills and its persistence, the feds would find a way to put Davis in the narrow doorway where Sayesva had been killed. Davis would probably be indicted. Convicted? Leaphorn tried to figure the odds on that, working with imponderable ifs, and he found he didn’t really care. His mother would have told him not to worry, that the wind of life that blows through the minds of humans had turned dark inside Davis. Evil had controlled him. By the laws of Navajo metaphysics he would, inevitably, suffer for that. What did the white man’s thirst for vengeance matter? Anyway, the world would know the Honest Indian Trader had sold a fake Lincoln Cane. The Davis reputation would be forever ruined.