Relentless (2 page)

The main street was nine blocks of parking meters and facelifted chain stores, a grain warehouse, used-car lots with flapping pennants, three gas stations, the company-owned San Miguel Bank & Trust, the Hollywood Beauty Salon (“What Price Beauty? Free Estimate!”). Rusty pickup trucks and muddy Chryslers were parked on the slant at a few meters and the clinging film of red dust coated everything—the display windows, the beer joints, the hamburger drive-in, the laundromat and the baroque old Paramount movie show with its Moorish marquee.

Watchman parked in front of the Copper King Café and plugged a nickel into the meter. “I'll meet you inside.” He walked on past Woolworth's to the corner, turned by the bank entrance and went into Zane's Jewelers next door. Behind the glass counter the old man looked up from his watch-repair bench, jeweler's glass perched on top of his spectacles.

“So. You've come to ransom the ring? I thought it was about time.” The old man got it out of the safe and Watchman bent over the countertop on his elbows, laboriously scrawling out the check in his crabbed hand. When he looked up the old man had placed the pale blue velvety case by his elbow.

The old man picked up the check and examined it as if he suspected its worth; held it up against the light, flapped it back and forth and blew on it, although Watchman's pen was a ballpoint.

Watchman popped the velvet lid open and the ring winked at him with all its facets.

“You gotch self a beauty there.”

“I guess so,” Watchman said. “It sure cost enough.”

“Hell, I give it to you cheap. Anybody else had to pay a hundred more.
Some
of us appreciate what you people do for us.” The old man said it accusingly. He filled out a receipt and pushed it across the counter.

Watchman gave it a wooden look. “At least us redskins only scalp enemies. You always skin your friends like this?”

The old man was hurt. “Sam—Sam!” He spread his hands wide in the Old World gesture of helplessness, head cocked to one side. “You can afford it, you've got a steady job.”

“Aeah. The pay's bad, but the work's terrible.” He snapped the little box shut and put it in his pocket. “Thanks.” And went outside with his hand in the pocket touching the velvet-covered hardness of the ring case. Going around the corner he was picturing Lisa, her lovely eyes, the surprise of delight that would shine in them; he almost crashed into old Jasper Simalie on the bank steps.

“Jesus, Tsosie, you want to look out where you are going.” Old Jasper was grinning.

“
Yah'a'teh
, Jasper?”

Jasper Simalie still had a full bush of hair, grayshot and thick but very short; he had a big round Navajo face, deep square brackets creasing it right down past the mouth into the big dependable jaw. He had put on a few pounds since they had measured him for his guard's uniform and he was beginning to look a little like W. C. Fields as the Bank Dick, with the grey seams straining around his shoulders and paunch. He had a big forty-five in the black Army holster at his waist and the policeman's cap was tipped far back on his head.

Watchman grinned and poked his jaw toward the café. “Buy you a lunch.”

“Naw. I got to es-stick close to the bank.” Jasper indicated the green armored truck parked across the street in the shade. “It's the fourth Friday.”

Every second and fourth Friday of the month the company-owned bank had a heavy load of cash brought in from Salt Lake to meet the payroll needs of the mine and smelter. On weekends the casinos over in Vegas wouldn't accept out-of-state payroll checks and San Miguel accommodated its employees by cashing their checks before they set out for the Nevada weekend.

It was one of the regional facts of life they had impressed on Watchman when they had assigned him to the district. At first he hadn't believed the size of the sums involved but when you worked it out it added up. You had more than twelve thousand workers drawing down an average wage of two hundred dollars a week. With a biweekly payroll that added up to five million dollars every two weeks. If five thousand of those men drew half their pay in cash that came to a round million dollars, part of which made a one-way trip to Las Vegas. Usually it didn't come to that much but the bank had to prepare for the maximum and so every other Friday morning the armored truck brought in one million dollars in tens, twenties, fifties and hundreds: largely hundreds, because the big bills were popular with weekend gamblers. The truck waited all day and after closing it would transport whatever was left back to the head office in Salt Lake City. It was a long day's run and the Utah office provided maximum security: the armored truck carried four guards and was convoyed by two cars, one in front and one behind, each containing two armed men. The run itself was judged to be that risky. But once the money reached the San Miguel bank it appeared to be safe enough, partly because the eight armed guards and the driver hung around the bank all day but mostly because the single highway through town could be stoppered at both ends on five minutes' notice to prevent getaways. There were no other roads out. Not even dirt tracks. And the buckled terrain around the flats was impassable to anything but goats.

Even so, these Fridays were tense for old Jasper. He was the head guard: the safety of all that cash was his responsibility.

Jasper took it very seriously because it had taken him thirty-five years to work his way up to this job from a sheep-flock beginning in a hardscrabble back-country hogan forty miles from Kiacochomovi village on the Window Rock Reservation. Jasper and Sam Watchman's father had been Agency Policemen at Canyon de Chelly together; Jasper was like an uncle to Watchman and he still called Watchman by his Navajo name, which was Tsosie Duggai, and Watchman loved the fat old man with deep fond warmth.

Jasper flapped a hand toward the bank door. “I keep telling Mr. Whipple we ought to put in some of them bank protection devices. We going to get hit one day.”

“I doubt it. More likely they'd go for the truck out on the highway someplace. Up in Utah.”

“With all that armor plate and all them guards?”

“If they hit the bank how are they going to get out of here? You want to relax, Jasper.”

“Maybe. I es-still think we ought to put in some cameras and bulletproof plexiglass panes for them tellers to work behind.”

“You've got a good alarm system and a big gun on your belt. But I'll tell you what, Jasper, if you really want to keep the bad guys scared off maybe you ought to get yourself a feathered headdress and a tomahawk.”

3

He stopped just outside the café and looked at the sky: he could smell a change in weather coming, a thin scent of winter in the air. The sky was clear cobalt, only a few cloud banks to the west, but there was a sharp chill to it and those clouds were advancing fast. Snowstorms sometimes hit the high plateau as early as the end of September and here it was the fourth Friday in October. It was a sudden country.

He went inside. The café was filled with the bass thumpings of Johnny Cash on the jukebox. “Custer's Last Fight” on the wall and denim buttocks arrayed in a row along the counter stools; high-top boots and cowboy hats. Ranch fresh eggs and chicken-fried steaks and the smell of fried grease. Over in a booth Buck Stevens was consuming a hamburger with lots of raw onions. Stevens was a wholesome kid with a square sturdy face and bright china-blue eyes that had an antic way of bobbing about, seldom missing much. He was going to make a good cop.

Jace Cunningham was there in the same booth, wolfing a sandwich, keeping his hat on while he ate. When Watchman reached the table Cunningham slid over into the corner without missing a mouthful and said something muffled that Watchman took to be an invitation to sit.

“How's it going, Jace?” He sat down and planted his elbows on the plastic table top.

Cunningham wore a business suit with an elaborate brazen badge pinned to the lapel. It looked like the kind of badge you could buy in the toy department at Woolworth's; it said “City Constable.” Cunningham had a long spare body and a solemn little face. His skin was as freckled as knockwurst. He had been born fifty-three years old—dependable, proper, sober, de-liberate. He was employed by the copper company as chief of police in San Miguel and he was one-fourth of its manpower.

The buxom blonde waitress came over and propped her left elbow into her waist to write in her pad. “Looks like a policemen's convention here. What'll it be, Trooper?”

Watchman studied the chalked menu on the blackboard above the counter. “How's the chili today?”

“I don't know. I ain't tried it.”

Stevens was watching her and she was aware of his attention; she cocked her hip slightly.

“Maybe you ought to try it,” Stevens said. “Might put hair on your chest.”

“In a minute,” she said in a tone laced with scorn, “I'm leaving. I can't take this police brutality.”

Watchman said chili and coffee. When the girl went away, with a little extra swing in her walk because she knew Stevens was watching, Cunningham said, “They got snow over to Nevada last night. Like as not we'll catch some tonight. You two planning to stay up here or go on down to Flag?”

“Hadn't thought about it,” Watchman said.

“Maybe you ought to. You don't want to get caught up in them high passes.”

The diamond ring in its little box made a hard knot in his pocket and he said, “I guess we'll start back for Flag, then. All right with you, Buck?”

There was a rowdy flavor to the rookie's grin. “Snow hell. You just want to get back to Lisa and cozy up in Flag till it blows over. Snowstorm? Hah—red man speak with forked tongue.”

Cunningham, with his mouth full, rolled his eyes from face to face to see how Watchman would take that. Cunningham had always been a little uneasy with him: Cunningham was an old wrangler from Texas. Watchman had been down in West Texas once years ago and he hadn't stayed any longer than he'd had to: in the filling station they'd had three sets of toilets—
Whites, Coloreds, Mexicans
—and evidently if you were a native American you had to practice extreme continence in those parts.

Watchman slid the ring case out of his pocket and pushed it across the table. Stevens clicked it open and his mouth formed a circle. “Jesus. I've seen Eskimos living on smaller rocks than this. What'd you pay for it—twenty-four dollars in glass beads and red cloth?”

Cunningham squirmed and addressed himself to the remains of his sandwich.

Watchman laughed softly and retrieved the ring and Stevens said, “You figure to give it to her tonight?”

“I had it in mind.” All the months of counting up the back pay he'd saved: this night was going to be sweet. He could picture the soft shine of joy on her face.

The waitress delivered Watchman's chili and when she turned away Stevens reached for her wrist. “Honey, what's your name?”

“Francine. What's yours?”

“Buck. Buck Stevens.” He said it with an aw-shucks tilt of his head and the blond cowlick fell over his eyebrow and Watchman tried to repress a grin. “You weren't by any chance looking for a lift into Flagstaff this afternoon, Francine?”

“Now if I was, what makes you think I'd go with you?”

Stevens brightened. “How about it, then?”

“Nuts.” She reached over to pick up Cunningham's plate and the white dress stretched tight over her ample breasts. “I've got work to do.” She straightened and gave him an arch look. “But come back when you're big enough.” She even looked like Mae West.

“Big enough where?” Stevens riposted softly; his eyes began to flash with lecherous hilarity.

When Francine laughed her eyes wrinkled up until they were almost shut. “Y'all come back, hear? I'll be around.” And flounced away.

Watchman laughed till his stomach hurt. It was a good day for laughter. A fine day, with Lisa waiting at the end of it.

Cunningham got up awkwardly and Watchman let him out. “You boys look out for that snow, now,” the constable said, and went tottering over to the cashier's register on his cowboy boots. He hadn't even cracked a smile the whole time. You could always depend on white men to be inscrutable.

“Sour old fart,” Stevens observed.

“I'll tell you, son, comes, the red revolution and there'll be some changes made. We're going to guide the white man in the proper enjoyment of life. We're going to educate his funny bone so he can rise up to our level of civilization from his unhappy savage state. And when that's done the Bureau of White Folks' Affairs will sign over full citizenship rights to the white man for as long as the sun shall rise and the rivers flow to the sea.”

“You tell 'em,
kemo sabe
.”

4

The clouds to the west didn't look sinister yet but up here it could hit very fast. They cleared the edge of town and Watchman put the cruiser up to sixty on the road heading east toward the mountains. A light plane went by overhead at four or five thousand feet with a buzzing sound that irritated Watchman: there were several fly-by-night outfits over on the Utah and Nevada slopes which made a business out of taking rich poachers into the Arizona high country at night to hunt antelope and whitetail from slow, low-flying planes equipped with enormous floodlamps that could pin an animal, dazzle it, paralyze it until the arrogant “sportsmen” had made their kill. Then the guide outfit would send in a flunky in a pickup truck to collect the carcass and if the pickup got intercepted the driver would claim he had collided with the animal and killed it by accident. Game wardens seldom had time or facilities to perform autopsies and most of the time the flying poachers got away with it.

This plane didn't look like a hunter; more like a business executive's charter job. One of those Twin Apaches that seated seven or eight. It went over with a harsh drone, flying west toward the clouds, probably headed for Las Vegas or Reno.