The Shape Shifter Read online

  “Yes sir,” Leaphorn said. “Are you Mr. Tarkington?”

  “Right.”

  “I am trying to get into contact with a Mr. Mel Bork. His wife said he’d gone to see you on some business we’re trying to check into. I thought you might know where I could reach him.”

  This produced a silence. Then a sigh. “Mel Bork. What was this business of yours about?”

  “It concerned a Navajo rug.”

  “Ah, yes. The magical, mystical rug woven to commemorate the return of the Dineh from captivity at Bosque Redondo. Full of bits and pieces supposed to reflect memories of the miseries, starvation, of the tribe’s captivity and that long walk home. It was supposed to be started in the 1860s, finished a lot later. That it?”

  “Yes,” Leaphorn said, and paused. Noticing that Tarkington’s tone had been sarcastic. Waiting for anything Tarkington might add. Deciding how to handle this.

  “Well,” Tarkington said. “What can I do you for?”

  “Can you tell me where Bork was headed when he left you?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  Leaphorn waited again. Again, no luck.

  “You have no idea?”

  “Look, Mr. Leaphorn, I think maybe we do need to talk about this, but not on the phone. Where are you?”

  “In Window Rock.”

  “How about coming to the gallery tomorrow? Could you make it? Maybe have a late lunch?”

  Leaphorn thought about what tomorrow held for him. Absolutely nothing.

  “I’ll be there,” he said.

  5

  Leaphorn was on the road early, driving with a gaudy sunrise in his rearview mirror. He took Navajo Route 12, joined Interstate 40, set his speed at a modest (but legal) seventy-five miles per hour, and let the flood of westbound speeders race by him. He would reach Flagstaff with time to find Tarkington’s gallery, and the drive would give him a chance to consider what he was getting into.

  The first step was reexamining his memory of the tape Mrs. Bork had played for him and what little else he’d learned from her in that short conversation. That didn’t take long.

  She’d remembered that seeing the picture had excited Bork. She’d said Mel had told her about the old crime, and about having talked to Leaphorn about it in Washington years ago. Then Mel had made two, maybe three telephone calls. She hadn’t heard who he was calling. After the last one he had shouted something to her about the Tarkington gallery, and maybe coming home late, and to tell anyone who called he’d be back in his office tomorrow. Then he had driven away. Nothing in that helped much.

  By the time he reached the Sanders, Arizona, exit, Leaphorn decided it was coffee time and pulled off the interstate at a diner to see what he could learn. The old Burnham trading post here had been known for its Navajo weavers. The Navajo Nation had bought territory along the Santa Fe Railway mainline here and used it as relocation places for the five hundred Navajo families forced out of the old Navajo-Hopi Joint Use reservation. The weavers among the refugees had developed some new patterns that came to be called the New Lands rugs, and a Sanders trader had been sort of an authority on them, and on rugs in general. If he could find this fellow, Leaphorn planned to show him the photo of the old carpet to see what he knew about it.

  The waitress who brought him his coffee was about eighteen and had never heard of any of this. The man behind the cash register had heard of him, and he recommended Leaphorn find Austin Sam, who had been a candidate for the Tribal Council and seemed to know just about everybody in the New Lands Chapter House territory. But the cashier didn’t know where Mr. Sam could be found. Neither did Leaphorn.

  Thus Leaphorn reentered the roaring river of Interstate 40 traffic no wiser than before. He rolled into Flagstaff and found the Tarkington Museum Gallery parking lot about ten minutes before noon. A tall man, graybearded, wearing an off-white linen jacket, was standing at the door, smiling, waiting for him.

  “Lieutenant Leaphorn,” he said. “You look just like the pictures I’ve seen of you. You drove all the way from Window Rock this morning?”

  “I did,” Leaphorn said, as Tarkington ushered him into the gallery.

  “Then freshen up if you wish,” Tarkington said, pointing toward the restroom, “and then let’s have some lunch and talk.”

  When Leaphorn emerged refreshed, he found lunch was being served in an alcove just off the gallery. A girl, who Leaphorn identified as probably a Hopi, was pouring ice water into glasses on a neatly set table. Tarkington was already seated with a copy of Luxury Living in front of him, opened to the photograph.

  “Unless you want something special, we could get lunch here,” he said. “Just sandwiches and fruit. Would that satisfy you?”

  “Sure,” Leaphorn said, and seated himself, weighing what this development might mean. Obviously it meant Tarkington must consider this talk important. Why else would he be taking the trouble to put Leaphorn in the role of guest, with the psychological disadvantage that went with that. But it did save time. Not that Leaphorn didn’t have plenty of that.

  The girl passed Leaphorn an attractive plate of neatly trimmed sandwiches in a variety of types. He took one offering ham, cheese, and lettuce. She asked if he’d like coffee. He would. She poured it for him from a silver urn. Tarkington watched all this in silence. Now he served himself a sandwich and toasted Leaphorn with his water glass.

  “Down to business now?” he said, making it a question. “Or just make chat while we eat?”

  “Well, I am here trying to find an old friend, but I am also hungry.”

  “You are looking for Melvin Bork, right? The private investigator?”

  Leaphorn nodded. He sipped his coffee. Excellent. He looked at his sandwich, took a small bite. Also fine.

  “Why look here?”

  “Because his wife thought he would be coming here to ask you about a rug. Is that correct?”

  “Oh, yes. He was here.” Tarkington was smiling, looking amused. “Three days ago. He had a copy of one of those expensive upscale real estate magazines with a picture of it. This magazine.” He tapped the picture, smiling at Leaphorn.

  Leaphorn nodded.

  “He asked if I had seen a rug that looked like that, and I said yes, I had. One much like that got burned up in a fire way back. A real shame. It was a famous tale-teller rug. Famous among the bunch who love the really old weavings, and especially among the odd ones who dote on the artifacts that have scary stories attached. And this one does. Dandy stories. Full of death, starvation, all that.”

  He smiled at Leaphorn again, picked up his glass, rattled the ice in it.

  “And it was also a wonderful example of the weavers’ art. A real beauty. Bork asked me to take a close look at the magazine photo and tell him what I could about it.”

  Tarkington paused to take a sip of his water. And, Leaphorn presumed, to decide just how much he wanted to say about this.

  “I told him the picture resembled a very old, very valuable antique. Rug people called such weavings tale tellers because they usually represent someone, or something, memorable. And the tale in this one was of all the dying, humiliation, and misery you Navajos went through when the army put you in that concentration camp over on the Pecos back about a hundred and fifty years ago.”

  Tarkington extracted a reading-sized magnifying glass from his jacket pocket and held it close to the photograph, studying places here and there. “Yes, it does look something like that old rug Totter had at his trading post years ago.”

  “Something like?” Leaphorn asked. “Can you be a little more specific than that?”

  Tarkington put down the glass, studied Leaphorn. “That brings up an interesting question, doesn’t it? That one was burned—let’s see—back in the very late 1960s or early 1970s I think. So the question I want to ask you is, when was this photograph taken?”

  “I don’t know,” Leaphorn said.

  Tarkington considered that, shrugged.

  “Well, Bork asked me if I thought it c
ould be a photograph of a copy of the rug Totter had, and I said I guessed anything is possible, but it didn’t make much sense. Even if you had real good detailed photos of the original to work from, the weavers would still be dealing with trying to match yarns, and vegetable dyes, and using different people with different weaving techniques. And with this particular rug, they would even be trying to work in the same kind of bird feathers, petals from cactus blossoms, stems and such. For example…” Tarkington paused, tapped a place on the photo with a finger. “For example, this deep color of red right here—presuming this is a good color reproduction—is pretty rare. The old weavers got it from the egg sac of one of the big desert spiders.” He smiled at Leaphorn. “Sounds weird, I guess, but that’s what the experts say. And it gives you an idea how tough it would be to make a copy.”

  Tarkington sipped his water again, eyes on Leaphorn, waiting for a reaction.

  “I guess you’re telling me that Bork asked you for an opinion about whether the photograph was of a copy of the original.”

  “Yep. He did. And I told him it was probably a photograph of somebody’s effort at making a copy. Pretty damned good one, too. I suggested he might call the fellow who has it on his wall. See if he’d let him take a look at it. And then Mr. Bork said he thought he would do that, but he wanted to find out what I thought about it first. And I said those superrich folks who collect artifacts like that are going to be very careful about who they let into their house unless they know you. Bork said he thought about that and he wanted me to sort of introduce him so the man would let him in. And I had to tell him I didn’t actually know the man myself. Just by reputation.” Tarkington picked up his cup, noticed it was empty, put it down.

  “Bork thought a man named Jason Delos had bought that house. I guess I could call information to get his telephone number. If it’s listed,” Leaphorn said. “Is that the right name? I think I’ll need to go talk to him.”

  “You’re right about the number being unlisted,” Tarkington said. “And Jason Delos is the name. I guess he must be out of a Greek family.”

  Leaphorn nodded. “Am I right in guessing you know his number?”

  “Carrie,” Tarkington shouted. “Bring Mr. Leaphorn some more coffee and me some more ice water.”

  “You know him just by reputation? Who is he?”

  Tarkington laughed. “I know him just as a potential future customer. It’s obvious he has a lot of money. Collects expensive stuff. Moved in here a while back, either from Southern California because the sun was bad for his wife’s skin condition, or Oregon, because the fog and humidity depressed his wife.” Tarkington gave Leaphorn a wry smile. “You know how reliable gossip is out here where we don’t have a lot of people to gossip about. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear he doesn’t have a wife. Nobody seems ever to have met her. He has a middle-aged Asian man living out there with him. Sort of a butler, I think. And he uses a maid/laundry service, and so forth. And that butler leads into another story.”

  With that Tarkington shook his head and laughed, signaling to Leaphorn that this story did not carry his certification.

  “This one makes Mr. Delos some sort of CIA agent, did a lot of work in the Vietnam War, retired after that and went into some sort of investment business. Then another version is that he got kicked out of the CIA because a bunch of the money our government was using to pay off South Vietnam government types when they were arranging that coup to get rid of President Diem—you remember that business?”

  “I’ve read about it,” Leaphorn said. “As I remember, it blew up into a big battle in Saigon with paratroopers attacking Diem’s bunch in the Presidential Palace.”

  “Yeah. It brought in a new president more popular with President Kennedy. Well, anyway, the way the gossip goes, the CIA, or whatever they were calling it then, had been handing out bags of money to help arrange that, and some of the generals who were getting it thought they were shorted. One of those quiet investigations got started, and it was concluded that some of those money bags got lighter when in the custody of Mr. Delos.”

  “Oh,” Leaphorn said, and nodded.

  Tarkington shrugged. “Well, you could probably find a couple of other versions of the Delos biography if you wanted to ask around in Flagstaff. He just sits up there all alone on his mountain and gives us somebody interesting to talk about. Take your pick, whichever version you prefer. Like a lot of rich folks, he’s into protecting his family’s privacy, so our gossiping fraternity has to be creative.”

  The Hopi girl returned, smiled at Leaphorn, refilled his coffee cup, refilled Tarkington’s glass, and left.

  “What I really want to know, I guess, is how he got that rug. Then I track it back, find out who made it, and that’s the end of it,” Leaphorn said. “So I need to know his telephone number so I can go ask him.”

  Tarkington was grinning. “So you can be done with this case, and go back to your usual police duties?”

  “So I can go back to being a bored-stiff-by-retirement former policeman.”

  “Well,” Tarkington said, staring at Leaphorn. “If you do learn anything interesting—for example, who copied it if anyone actually did, and why, and so forth—I’d sure appreciate hearing all about it.”

  Leaphorn considered that. “All right,” he said.

  Now Tarkington took a moment to think. He sipped his water again, while Leaphorn sipped coffee.

  “You may have noticed I love to talk,” Tarkington said, emphasizing the statement with a wry smile. “That would give me something new to talk about.”

  Leaphorn nodded. “But you haven’t told me his number.”

  “You had the name right,” Tarkington said. “Jason Delos.”

  Leaphorn picked up a second sandwich, took a bite. Judged it as very good.

  “Of course I collect stuff myself,” Tarkington said, and gestured into the gallery to demonstrate. “And I collect stories. Love ’em. And that damned Woven Sorrow tale-teller rug collected them like dogs collect fleas. And I want to know what you find out from Delos, if anything, and how this all turns out. Will you promise me that?”

  “If it’s possible,” Leaphorn said.

  Tarkington leaned forward, pointed at an odd-looking pot on a desk by the wall. “See that image of the snake on that ceramic there? That’s a Supai pot. But why is that snake pink? It’s a rattler, and they’re not that color. Well, I guess they are in one deep part of the Grand Canyon. There’s a very rare and officially endangered species down there in Havasupai territory, and they have a great story in their mythology about how it came to be pink. And that’s going to make that pot a lot more valuable to the fellow who collects it.”

  He stared at Leaphorn, looking for some sign of agreement.

  “I know that’s true,” Leaphorn said. “But I’m not sure I understand why.”

  “Because the collector gets the story along with the pot. People say why is that snake pink. He explains. That makes him an authority.” Tarkington laughed. “You Navajos don’t practice that one-upmanship game like we do. You fellows who stay in that harmony philosophy.”

  Leaphorn grinned. “Be more accurate to say a lot of Navajos try, but remember we have a curing ceremony to heal us when we start getting vengeful, or greedy, or—what do you call it—‘getting ahead of the Joneses.’”

  “Yeah,” Tarkington said. “I could tell you a tale about trying to get a Navajo businessman to buy a really fancy saddle. Lots of silver decorations, beautiful stitching, even turquoise worked in. He was interested. Then I told him it would make him look like the richest man on the big reservation. And he took a step back and said it would make him look like a witch.”

  Leaphorn nodded. “Yes,” he said. “At least it would make the traditional Dineh suspicious. Unless he didn’t have any poor kinfolks whom he should have been helping. And all of us have poor kinfolks.”

  Tarkington shrugged. “Prestige,” he said. “You Navajos aren’t so hungry for that. I’ll ask a Navajo ab
out something that I know he’s downright expert about. He won’t just tell me. He’ll precede telling me by saying, ‘They say.’ Not wanting me to think he is claiming the credit.”

  “I guess I’ve heard that preamble a million times,” Leaphorn said. “In fact, I do it myself sometimes.” He was thinking that at his age, already retired, left on the shelf like the pink snake, he should understand that white cultural values were different from those of the Dineh, remembering how Navajo kids were conditioned by their elders to be part of the community, not to stand out, not to be the authority; remembering how poorly that attitude had served his generation, the age group that had been bused away to Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools to be melded into the belagaana culture.

  “Who discovered America?” the teacher would ask. Every student in the class knew the belagaana answer was Christopher Columbus, but only the Hopi and Zuni kids would hold up their hands. And if the teacher pointed to a Navajo kid, that kid would inevitably precede his answer with the “they say” disclaimer. And the teacher, instead of crediting the Navajo with being politely modest, would presume he was taking a politically correct Native American attitude and implying that he was refusing to agree with what textbook and teacher had been telling him. Remembering all that, and the confusion it sometimes produced, caused Leaphorn to smile.

  The smile puzzled Tarkington. He looked slightly disappointed.

  “Anyway, I’d like to hear more about the stories you’ve collected about this tale-teller rug,” Leaphorn said. “I’ll tell you what I hear if it’s anything new.”

  Tarkington took another sandwich. He passed the tray to Leaphorn, his expression genial again.

  “First one I’ll tell you is pretty well documented, I think. Probably mostly true. Seems the rug was started by a young woman named Cries a Lot, a woman in the Streams Come Together clan. It was in the final days of the stay in the Bosque Redondo concentration camp. She was one of the nine thousand of your people the army rounded up and marched way over to the Pecos River Valley to get them out of the way.”