On the road that leads from Grants into the back side of Ambrosia Lakes uranium fields, Chee returned the recorder to its case and concentrated on finding the home of Tomas Charley. He found it some thirty feet west of the narrow asphalt pavement. It was a two-room adobe to which someone had connected a wooden frame lean-to with a roof of red composition shingles. A 1962 Chevrolet Impala squatted on cinderblock supports in the front yard, all four of its wheels missing. Chee pulled his patrol car to a stop beside it and sat waiting. If someone was home, willing to receive a visitor, he would appear at the door. If he didn’t after a polite interval of waiting, Chee would knock.

The front door opened and Chee could see someone looking at him through the screen. A child. Chee waited. No one else appeared. Chee climbed out of the carryall.

“Ya-tah, “he said. “Hello.”

“Hello,” the child said. It was a boy, about ten or twelve.

“I’m looking for Tomas Charley,” Chee said.

“He went to get my mother,” the boy said.

“Where’s that?”

“They won’t be there,” the boy said. “She’s a weaver. My uncle was taking her to the rug auction.”

“At Crownpoint?” Chee asked.

“Yeah,” the boy said. “She’s going to sell a bunch of rugs.”

Chee laughed. “I’m not very lucky today,” he said. “That’s where I came from and now I’ll have to drive right back.”

“You going to see my uncle there?”

“If I can find him,” Chee said. “What’s he driving?”

“A 1975 Ford pickup,” the boy said. “An F-150. Blue. If you see him, tell him maybe somebody wants to buy our old Chevy. Tell him a man came by right after he left, looking for him,” the boy said.

“Sure,” Chee said. “Anything else?”

“Maybe the man will see him there at the rug auction,” the boy said. “He’s a blond guy, wearing a yellow jacket. He was going to look for him there.”

“Okay,” Chee said. He looked at the car with more interest now. The exposed brake drums were brown with rust and the upholstery in the back seat hung down in dusty festoons Tomas Charley’s nephew was overly optimistic. No one was going to drive all the way to Crownpoint to arrange to buy that junker.

12

IT WAS AFTER SUNDOWN when Chee drove past the Tribal Police office. It was dark. On the other side of the village, perhaps two hundred assorted vehicles were parked at the Crownpoint elementary school, suggesting a good turnout for the November rug auction. Chee found a blue Ford 150 pickup. Parked next to it was a green-and-white Plymouth, like the one Charley’s nephew had said the would-be car buyer was driving. Chee checked it quickly. It was new, with less than three thousand miles on the odometer. A folder on the dashboard suggested it had been rented from the Albuquerque airport office of Hertz.

Inside the school, the air was rich with a mélange of aromas. Chee identified the smells of cooking fry bread, floor wax, blackboard chalk, stewing mutton and red chili, of raw wool, of horses, and of humans. In the auditorium, perhaps a hundred potential buyers were wandering among the stacks of rugs on the display tables, inspecting the offerings and noting item numbers. At this hour, most of the crowd would be in the cafeteria, eating the traditional auction dinner of Navajo tacos – tortillas topped with a lethal combination of stewed mutton and chili. Chee stood just inside the auditorium entrance, methodically examining its inhabitants. He had little idea what Charley would look like-just Becenti’s sketchy description. His inspection was simply a matter of habit.

“Looking for someone?”

The voice came from beside him, from a young woman in a blue turtleneck sweater. The woman was small, the sweater large, and the face atop the folds of bulky cloth was unsmiling.

“Trying to find a man named Tomas Charley,” Chee said. “But I don’t know what he looks like.”

The woman’s face was oval, framed by soft blond hair. Her eyes were large, and blue, and intent on Chee. A pretty lady, and Chee recognized the look. He had seen it often at the University of New Mexico – and most often among Anglo coeds enrolled in Native American Studies courses. The courses attracted Anglo students, largely female, enjoying racial/ethnic guilt trips. Chee had concluded early that their interest was more in Indian males than in Indian mythology. Their eyes asked if you were really any different from the blond boys they had grown up with. Chee looked now into the eyes of the woman in the bulky blue turtleneck and detected the same question. Or thought he did. There was also something else. He smiled at her. “Not knowing what he looks like makes it tougher to find him.”

“Why not just go away and leave him alone?” she asked. “What are you hunting him for?”

Chee’s smile evaporated. “I have a message from his nephew,” he said. “Somebody wants to buy his old car and…”

“Oh,” the young woman said. She looked embarrassed. “I guess I shouldn’t jump to conclusions. I’m sorry. I don’t know him.”

“I’ll just ask around,” Chee said. Her distaste for police was another standard reaction Chee had learned to expect from the young Anglos the reservation seemed to attract. He suspected there was a federal agency somewhere assigned to teach social workers that all police were Cossacks and that Navajo police were the worst of all. “Are you with the Bureau of Indian Affairs?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I’m helping the weavers’ cooperative.” She gestured vaguely toward the check-in table, where two Navajo women were sorting through papers. “But I teach school here. Fifth grade. English and social studies.” The hostility was gone from her eyes now. The curiosity remained.

“I’m Jim Chee.” He extended his hand. “I’ve been assigned to the police station here. Fairly new here.”

“I noticed your uniform,” she said. She took his extended hand. “Mary Landon,” she said. “I’m new, too. From Wisconsin, but I taught last spring at Laguna Pueblo school.”

“How do you do,” Chee said. Her hand was small and cool in his, and very quickly withdrawn.

“I have to get back to work,” Mary Landon said, and she was gone.

It took Chee about thirty minutes to establish that Tomas Charley was present at the auction and to get a description of the man. He might have done it faster had there been any sense of urgency. There wasn’t. Chee was more involved in getting acquainted with the occupants of his territory. Then Mary Landon was at his elbow again.

“That’s him,” she said. “Right over there. The red-and-black mackinaw and the black felt hat.”

“Thanks,” Chee said. Mary Landon still wasn’t smiling.

Tomas Charley was leaning against the wall alone. He seemed to be watching someone in the crowd. Mary Landon said something else, but Chee didn’t hear it. He was studying Charley. He was a small man – not over five and a half feet – and skinny. His face was bony, with small, deep-set eyes and a narrow forehead under the brim of his tipped-back hat. There was an alertness about him, a tension. The eyes shifted to Chee now, quickly past him, and back again. Becenti had said he was half crazy, a fanatic. The small black eyes had the took of those who see visions. Getting Tomas Charley to talk, Chee thought, would take a lot of care and a lot of luck.

As it developed, it was no trouble at all. They talked a bit about the rug auction, and about the drought. Chee leaned against the wall beside the man, guiding the conversation. The auctioneer was on the stage now, a florid white man explaining the rules in a West Texas voice. Chee talked of Sheriff Gordo Sena, of jurisdiction problems between Navajo police and white sheriffs. The first rug was auctioned for $65. Bidding on the second one stuck at $110. The auctioneer put it aside and joked with the crowd about its stinginess. He moved the offer up to $155, and sold it.