Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 03] (13 page)

“Tull?” The name seemed vaguely familiar. “He’s the only one we got,” Witover said.

He grimaced. “It turns out Tull thinks he’s immortal. Believe it or not, the son-of-a-bitch claims to think he’s already died two or three times and comes back to life.” Witover’s eyes held Leaphorn’s, gauging his reaction. “That’s what he tells the federal psychiatrists, and the shrinks tell us they believe he believes it.”

Witover got up, and peered through the glass down at Gold Avenue.

“He sure as hell acts like he believes it,” he continued. “All of a sudden the truckdriver finds himself blocked, front and rear, and Tull jumps out of the van and puts some sort of gadget on the antenna to cut off radio transmission. By the time he gets that done the guard and driver are bright enough to have figured out that a robbery attempt is in progress. But Tull trots around to the rear door and starts stuffing this puttylike stuff around the door hinges.

And what the hell you think the guard did?” Leaphorn thought about it. The guard would have been incredulous. “Yelled at him, probably.”

“Right. Asked him what the hell he was doing. Warned him he’d shoot. And by the time he did shoot, Tull had the putty in—and of course it was some sort of plastic explosive with a radio-activated fuse. And then the guard didn’t shoot until Tull had it worked in and was running away.”

“Then bang!” Leaphorn said. “Right. Bang.

Blew the door off,” Witover said. “When the police finally got there, the neighbors were giving first aid. Tull had a bullet through the lung, and the guard and the driver were in pretty bad shape from blast concussions, and the money was gone.”

“There must have been a bunch of them,” Leaphorn said. “Alt probably six. One to put out the detour signs to create the traffic jams, and whoever got on the helicopter, and Kelongy, and the one dressed as a cop who diverted the armored truck and followed it down Acequia Madre, and Tull and the guy driving the car behind the van. And each one of them faded away as his part of the job was done.”

“Except Tull,” Leaphorn said.

“We got Tull and an identification on the one who wore the police uniform and had the motorcycle. The driver and the guard got a good look at him. He’s the guy who called himself Hoski up at Wounded Knee, and something else before then, and a couple of other names since. He’s Kelongy’s right-hand man.”

“This Tull,” Leaphorn said.

“Was he in on that Ogden bank robbery? If I remember that one, didn’t they pull it off because a crazy bastard walked right up to a gun barrel?”

“Same guy,” Witover said. “No doubt about it. It was another money transfer. Two guards carrying bags and one standing there with a shotgun and Tull walks right up to the shotgun and the guard’s too damned surprised to shoot. You just can’t train people to expect something like that.”

“Maybe it’s a bargain, then,” Leaphorn said. “They got a half-million dollars and you got Tull.”

There was a brief silence. Witover made a wry face. “When Tull was in the hospital waiting to get the lung fixed up, we got bond set at $100,000—which is sort of high for a nonhomicide. Figured they were tossing Tull to the wolves, so we made sure Tull knew how much they had from the bank, and how much they needed to bail him out.”

Witover’s blue eyes assumed a sadness. “If they didn’t bail him out, the plan was to offer him a deal and get him to cooperate. And sure enough, no bail was posted. But Tull wouldn’t cooperate. The shrinks warned us he wouldn’t. And he didn’t. When no bail was posted, there was a theory that the Buffalo Society had lost the money and that Tull somehow knew it. That explained why they couldn’t find the copter. It had crashed into Lake Powell and sunk.” Leaphorn said nothing. He was thinking that the route of the copter, if extended, would have taken it down the lake. The red plastic lantern with HAAS stenciled on it was a floating lantern. And then there was the distorted story that its finder had seen a great bird diving into the lake. “Yes,” Leaphorn said. “Maybe that’s it.” Witover laughed, and shook his head. “It sounded plausible. Tull got his lung healed, and they transferred him to the state prison at Santa Fe for safekeeping, and months passed and they talked to him again, told him why be the fall guy, told him it was clear nobody was going to bond him out, and Tull just laughed and told us to screw ourselves.

And now”—Witover paused, his sharp blue eyes studying Leaphorn’s face for the effect—”and now they show up and bail him out.” It was what Leaphorn had expected Witover to say, but he caused his face to register surprise. Goldrims must be Tull, new to freedom and running to cover before the feds changed their minds and got the bond revoked. That would explain a lot of things. It would explain the craziness. He calculated rapidly, counting the days backward. “Did they bail him out last Wednesday?” Witover looked surprised. “No,” he said. “It was almost three weeks ago.” He gazed at Leaphorn, awaiting an explanation for the bad guess. Leaphorn shrugged. “Where is he now?”

“God knows,” Witover said. “They caught us napping. From what we can find out, it was this one they call Hoski. He made a cash deposit in five Albuquerque banks. Anyway, Tull’s lawyer showed up with five cashier’s checks, posted bond, got the order, and the prisoner was sprung before anybody had time to react.” Witover looked glum, remembering it. “So they didn’t lose the money. There goes the theory that the copter sank in the lake. They leave him in all that time, and then all of a sudden they spring him,” Witover complained. “Maybe all of a sudden they needed him,” Leaphorn said.

“Yeah,” Witover said. “I thought of that. It could make you nervous.”

The right eye of John Tull stared directly at the lens, black, insolent, hating the cameramen then, hating Leaphorn now. The left eye stared blindly upward and to the left out of its ruined socket, providing a sort of crazy, obscene focus for his lopsided head.

Leaphorn flipped quickly back into the biographical material. He learned that when John Tull was thirteen he had been kicked by a mule and suffered a crushed cheekbone, a broken jaw and loss of sight in one eye. It took only a glance at the photographs to kill any lingering thoughts that Tull and Goldrims might be the same.

Even in the dim reflection of the red warning flasher, a glimpse of John Tull would have been memorable. Leaphorn studied the photos only a moment. The right profile was a normally handsome, sensitive face—betraying the blood of Tull’s Seminole mother. The left showed what the hoof of a mule could do to fragile human bones. Leaphorn looked up from the report, lit a cigarette and puffed—thinking how a boy would learn to live behind a facade that reminded others of their own fragile, painful mortality. It helped explain why guards had been slow to shoot. And it helped explain why Tull was crazy—if crazy he was. The report itself offered nothing surprising. A fairly usual police record, somewhat heavy on crimes of violence. At nineteen, a two-to-seven for attempted homicide, served at the Santa Fe prison without parole—which almost certainly meant a rough record inside the walls. And then a short-term armed-robbery conviction, and after that only arrests on suspicion and a single robbery charge which didn’t stick. Leaphorn flipped past that into the transcripts of various interrogations after the Santa Fe robbery.

From them another picture of Tull emerged—wise and tough. But there was one exception. The interrogator here was Agent John O’Malley, and Leaphorn read through it twice.

O’Malley. You’re forgetting they drove right off and left you. Tull.

I wanted to collect my Blue Cross benefits. O’Malley. You’ve collected them now. Ask yourself why they don’t come and get you.

They got plenty of money to make bail. Tull. I’m not worrying.

O’Malley. This Hoski. This guy you call your friend. You know where he is now? He left Washington and he’s in Hawaii. Living it up on his share. And his share is fatter because part of it’s your share.

Tull. Screw you. He’s not in Hawaii. O’Malley. That’s what Hoski and Kelongy and the rest of them are doing to you, baby. Screwing you.

Tull (laughs.). O’Malley. You ain’t got a friend, buddy. You’re taking everybody’s fall for them. And this friend of yours is letting it happen. Tull. You don’t know this friend of mine. I’ll be all right. O’Malley. Face it. He went off and left you. Tull. God damn you. You pig. You don’t know him. You don’t even know his name.

You don’t even know where he is. He never will let me down. He never will.

Leaphorn looked up from the page, closed his eyes and tried to recreate the voice. Was it vehement? Or forlorn? The words on paper told him too little. But the repetition suggested a shout. And the shouting had ended that particular interview. Leaphorn put that folder aside and picked up the psychiatric report. He read quickly through the diagnosis, which concluded that Tull had psychotic symptoms of schizophrenic paranoia and that he suffered delusions and hallucinations. A Dr. Alexander Steiner was the psychiatrist. He had talked to Tull week after week following his bout with chest surgery and he’d established an odd sort of guarded rapport with Tull, surprisingly soon. Much of the talk was about a grim childhood with a drunken mother and a series of men with whom she had lived— and finally with the uncle whose mule had kicked him. Leaphorn scanned rapidly through the report, but he lingered over sections that focused on Tull’s vision of his own immortality.

Steiner. When did you find out for sure? Was it that first time in prison? Tull. Yeah. In the box. That’s what they called it then. The box. (laughs.) That’s what it was, too. Welded it together out of boiler plate. A hatch on one side so you could crawl in and then they’d bolt it shut behind you. It was under the floor of the laundry building in the old prison—the one they tore down. About five foot square, so you couldn’t stand up but you could lay down if you lay with your feet in one corner and your head in the other. You know what I mean? Steiner. Yes. Tull. Usually you got into t for hitting a guard or something like that. That’s what I done. Hit a guard. (laughs.) They don’t tell you how long you’re going to be in the box, and that wouldn’t matter anyway because it’s pitch black under that laundry and it’s even blacker in the box, so the only way you could keep track of the days passing is because the steam pipes from the laundry make more noise in the daytime. Anyway, they put me in there and bolted that place shut behind me. And you keep control pretty good at first. Explore around with your hands, find the rough places and the slick places on the wall. And you fiddle with the buckets. There’s one with drinking water and one you use as a toilet.

And then, all of a sudden, it gets to you. It’s closing in on you, and there ain’t no air to breathe, and you’re screaming and fighting the walls and … and … (laughs.) Anyway, I smothered to death in there. Sort of drowned. And when I came alive again, I was laying there on the floor, with the spilled water all cool and comfortable around me. I was a different person from that boy they put in the box. And I got to thinking about it and it came to me that wasn’t the first time I’d died and come alive again. And I knew it wouldn’t be the last time. Steiner. The first time you died. Was that when the horse kicked you? Tull. Yes, sir, it was. I didn’t know it then, though. Steiner. And then you feel as if you died again when this truck guard shot you at Santa Fe? Tull. You can feel it, you know.

There’s a kind of a shock when the bullet hits—a numb feeling. And it hurts a little where it went in and came out. Lot of nerves in the skin, I guess. But inside, it just feels funny. And you see the blood running out of you. (laughs.) I said to myself, “Well, I’m dyin’ again and when I come alive in my next life, I’m going to have another face.” Steiner. You think about that a lot, don’t you?

Having another face? Tull. It happened once. It’ll happen again.

This wasn’t the face I had the first time I died. Steiner. But don’t you think that if they had taken you to the right kind of surgeon he could have straightened it out after you got kicked? Tull. No. It was different. It wasn’t the one I had. Steiner. When you look in a mirror, though. When you look at the right side of your face, isn’t that the way you always looked? Tull. The right side? No. I didn’t really look like that in my first life. (laughs.) You got a cigarette? Steiner. Pall Malls. Tull. Thanks. You know, Doc, that’s why the pigs is so wrong about my buddy. The one they call Hoski.

They don’t even know his real name. He’s like me. He told me once that he’s immortal, too. Just let it slip out, like he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. But it don’t make any difference to me if everybody knows. And there’s another way I can tell he’s like me.

When he looks at me, he sees me. Me. You know. Not this goddamned face. He sees right through the face and he sees me behind it. Most people they look and they see this crazy eyeball, and they flinch, like they was looking at something sick and nasty. But— but my buddy … (laughs.) I almost let his real name slip out there. The first time he looked at me, he didn’t see this face at all. He just grinned and said

“Gladtameetcha,” or something like that, and we sat there and drank some beer, and it was just as if this face had peeled away and it was me sitting there. Steiner. But the police think this man sort of took advantage of you. Left you behind and all that. Tull. They think bullshit. They’re trying to con me into talking. They think I’m crazy, too. Steiner. What do you think about that? Tull. You ought to see the Kiowa. He’s the crazy one. He’s got this stone. Claims it’s a sort of a god. Got feathers and fur and a bone hanging from it. Hangs it from this goddamn bamboo tripod and sings to it. (laughs.) Calls it Boy Medicine, and Taly-da-i, or some damn thing like that. I think it’s a Kiowa word. He told us there at Wounded Knee that if those AIM people was willin’ to start shootin’ to kill, then this Boy Medicine would help them. The white man was goin’ to be wiped out and the Buffalo would cover the earth again.

(laughs.) How about that for crazy shit? Steiner. But isn’t that the leader of the organization? The one you’re supposed to be following?

Tull. The Kiowa? Shit. My buddy, he was workin’ with him, and I’m workin’ with my buddy. Following? We don’t follow nobody. Not my buddy and me.