The Drowning Man Read online

  The Indian hesitated, as if he’d gone further than he’d intended and wasn’t sure whether to go on. His gaze ran around the parking lot again. After a moment, he shrugged and brought his eyes back to Father John. “So I got an idea. All I gotta do is tell somebody else and let him tell the tribal mucky-mucks. Who better than the mission priest? So I checked out the mission yesterday, seen you comin’ out of church with all them people around, seen that beat-up red pickup in front of the house, and I put two and two together. I was on my way over to the mission when I seen you comin’ the other way, so I turned around.”

  “Find another messenger.” Father John started back toward the driver’s side of the Toyota, taking in the Indian’s license plate as he went, fixing the numbers in his mind.

  “I think you’re the messenger.” The Indian’s boots scraped the pavement behind him. “I think,” he said, “that you, bein’ the mission priest, are gonna wanna help these Indians get back what rightfully belongs to ’em. Get my drift?”

  Father John turned back and faced him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Rock art.”

  The Indian was standing so close that Father John could smell the sour mix of sweat and tobacco about the man. He’d read the article in this morning’s Gazette, below the black headline, “Rock Art Stolen.” The petroglyph had stood at the entrance to Red Cliff Canyon for two thousand years. The article said it was worth a quarter of a million dollars. Father John wondered if this was the thief who’d chiseled the image out of a boulder and hauled it away. And for what? To sell it? The irony in the man’s tone still hung in the air. The Indian intended to sell the petroglyph back to the tribes. What rightfully belongs to them.

  “You have the petroglyph?”

  “Me?” The Indian shook his head so hard that his shoulders swung back and forth. “I’m just deliverin’ the message.”

  “The man you work for has the petroglyph.”

  “Hey, Father, you ever get close to warm, I’ll let you know. The man knows his way around art and artifacts, all that stuff. You know what I mean? People that, let’s say, come into possession of stuff know how to find him. He arranges things, that’s all.”

  “So the thief wants the tribes to ransom their own petroglyph.”

  “The tribes, yeah, that’s right.” The black head nodded. “Doin’ ’em a favor, you ask me. Givin’ ’em first shot at it before…” He hesitated, glancing around again.

  “Before what?”

  “Hey, could be lots of rich folks out there wouldn’t mind showin’ off rock art on their big patios. Maybe they’d like to put it on the walls of their great big fancy living rooms. How do I know? I’m just tellin’ you that, if the tribes want their art back, they better move fast.”

  “How much?”

  “How much?” The Indian reared back and blinked at him. “Them rich people are gonna pay what that art’s worth, and the newspaper says it’s worth a quarter mil. Only fair, don’t you think, that the tribes come up with the same amount? The man’s not gonna take less than the fair amount. So you gonna deliver the message or what? Sho-Raps are gonna have to make up their minds real fast. The man’s got rich people bangin’ on his door, know what I mean?”

  “What if the tribes can’t raise that kind of money?”

  “Now that would be a shame, wouldn’t it? That rock art hangin’ on some rich guy’s wall. Decoratin’ his big yard. A stinkin’ shame, I’d call it. You know what I think? I think the tribes are gonna get the money ’cause the rock art is sacred and they want it back, and they’ll do whatever it takes to get it. Thing is, something sacred like that, they’re gonna want it right here on the reservation. Put it in a park someplace. Maybe some museum. There’s museums around here, right?”

  “What’s your name?” Keep him talking, Father John was thinking. Get more information. All he knew about the Indian was that he drove a dirty Ford sedan with Colorado plates and he was big and determined.

  “Sitting Bull. Any friggin’ name you like.” A strangled laugh came out of the man’s throat.

  “Let’s say I deliver the message. How will I get back to you?”

  “You don’t need to worry none about that.” The Indian lifted one fist and knocked it in the air toward Father John’s chest. “I’ll be hangin’ close, keepin’ an eye on you. You’ll be drivin’ down the road, and there I’ll be, right behind you. Next time, do me a favor and pull over, instead of draggin’ me miles and miles through nothing. Jesus, there’s a lot of nothing around here.” He jabbed the fist out toward the road. “So we got a deal?”

  “How do I know you aren’t just a con artist?” Father John said. “Maybe you read about the petroglyph and you’re trying to cash in. You want me to convince the tribes you can deliver the petroglyph, and you’re hoping they’ll be stupid enough to give you a lot of money.”

  “Yeah, maybe you got it all figured. Maybe you heard so many sins in that confessional of yours, you know all about con artists. You wanna give the tribes the chance to get their sacred art back? It’s your choice.”

  “If I turn you down, you’ll find somebody else,” Father John said. “Your man wants the message delivered. I don’t think he has any rich people lined up, or he wouldn’t bother trying to sell it back to the tribes.”

  “Wrong, Father. Maybe I’ll just tell the man the tribes ain’t interested, so go ahead and sell the friggin’ rock. Maybe I’ll do that.” The Indian turned back toward the Ford. He kicked at a pebble, sending it spiraling over the pavement.

  “I want to talk to him,” Father John said.

  “What?” The Indian looked back.

  “You heard me. I want proof he has the petroglyph. I want to make sure you aren’t trying to scam the people here.”

  “Maybe the man don’t want to talk to you.”

  “His choice,” Father John said. “St. Francis Mission is in the telephone book.” He stepped off the curb, got into the Toyota, and started the engine. As he backed out, he could see the Indian folding himself behind the sedan’s steering wheel and pulling the door shut behind him.

  Father John turned onto the road and fit the pickup between two SUVs. He checked his watch: 5:42. The tribal offices were already closed. The Indian could have gone to the offices earlier, asked to see one of the councilmen, delivered his own message. But he hadn’t. This Indian walks into one of them tribal offices, they’re gonna slap me in jail. He hadn’t gone to the tribal offices because somebody might have recognized him. It was making sense now, the logic falling into place. Somebody on the reservation knew who he was, and that explained something else. He’d tried to pull him over on Blue Sky Highway where there wasn’t much traffic. He could have delivered his message and been on his way. The Indian hadn’t wanted to talk to him at the mission. He hadn’t wanted to talk to him in the parking lot of a gas station and convenience store. He hadn’t wanted to be where people were about.

  Father John drove past the vacant dirt parking area in front of the tribal building. He’d been bluffing back at the gas station, but it might work. There was always the chance a bluff would work. If the Indian thought he was serious, he’d get hold of his boss, whoever he was. And the man would call. He would call—Father John was sure of it—because the quickest, easiest shot at making money on the petroglyph was to sell it back to the tribes.

  Father John reached over and fumbled for his cell phone in the glove compartment, which, for no reason he had ever figured out, Arapahos called the jockey box, finally dragging it past the crumpled maps and papers. He pressed the keys for information and got the number for Mickey Wolf. He had to slow down while he tapped it out. He jammed the cell against his ear and listened to the intermittent buzzing noise, followed by the sound of Mickey’s voice over the wails of an infant.

  “Hello?”

  Father John said that something had come up. Could he take a rain check?

  “No problem, Father,” Mickey said. “We’re not going anywhere.”

&
nbsp; Father John promised to stop by before the new baby went off to school.

  A little rumble of laughter came down the line. “I’ll tell him. See ya, Father,” Mickey said before the line went dead.

  Father John slowed the pickup and pulled the wheel to the right. He bumped over the barrow ditch and across a weed-patched field, then came out onto a narrow dirt road that wound past the backyards of two houses before plunging into the front yard of a small frame house with what looked like a new coat of gray paint. He stopped close to the wood stoop that jutted from the front door, turned off the engine, and waited. If Norman Yellow Hawk, one of the councilmen on the Arapaho Business Council, was home and wanted a visitor, he’d let Father John know in a couple of minutes.

  2

  NORMAN YELLOW HAWK straddled the straight-backed kitchen chair like a child. He wrapped mitt-sized hands around the coffee mug on the table and regarded Father John with half-closed eyes, as if he were chasing an idea somewhere in his head. Father John could hear the water boiling on the stove behind them. The kitchen was attached to the back of the house like an afterthought, filled with the odors of hot tomato sauce and basil. There was the sound of children playing outside, and every once in a while, one of Norman’s boys darted past the window next to the kitchen table.

  “You ever seen the Indian before?” the councilman asked.

  Father John shook his head. He took a sip of the hot coffee that Norman’s wife, Lea, had set before him. Stay for supper, Father? she’d wanted to know. He’d thanked her and explained that he had to get back to the mission. AA meeting tonight, and Elena, who had managed the residence, prepared the meals, and looked after the priests at St. Francis Mission for more years than she or anyone else could remember, would have kept his foil-wrapped dinner warm in the oven.

  “It’s possible that someone here knows him,” Father John said. “He didn’t want to go to the tribal offices.”

  Lea moved away from the counter where she’d been tearing lettuce into little pieces and dropping them into a bowl. She was a pretty woman with blue-black hair smoothed around her head into a pony-tail, a soft-looking face, and dark eyes that shone with worry. She wiped her hands on a towel, tossed it over to the counter, and set one hand on her husband’s shoulder. “Remember what happened last time, Norman,” she said.

  “Yeah, I remember.” Norman didn’t move away from his wife’s grasp. He stared at the window with a longing in his expression, eyes following the two boys tossing a baseball back and forth, shouting, laughing. Free. Beyond the dirt yard, the open plains stretched into the distances. “Last time a petroglyph was stolen, one of our Arapaho boys ended up shot to death,” he said. “The other is still locked up down in Rawlins.”

  “An Indian came to the office to see you then.” Lea tapped an index finger on her husband’s shoulder. “Said he could get the petroglyph back.”

  “Two hundred thousand dollars.” Norman rolled his head and glanced up at his wife. “Looks like the price went up. Now he wants two hundred and fifty for the Drowning Man. Bastard thinks we have that kind of money lying around in a slush fund someplace.”

  Father John took another drink of coffee and pushed the mug back. He set his forearms on the table and leaned toward the man across from him. “Who is he?” he said.

  “Middleman, the fed called him. SOB probably doing the dirty work for some artifact dealer those Arapaho cowboys got hooked up with. You remember them, don’t you, Father? Raymond Trublood and Travis Birdsong? Birdsong kept insisting he was innocent, never killed anybody. The way I figured it, they sold the glyph to some dealer that passed it on to rich folks for a lot of money. Lots of people looking for Indian art, you know. Don’t care that buying stolen artifacts is illegal as hell. Before the dealer went to a lot of trouble, I figured he sent his middleman to see if we wanted to buy back our own petroglyph!”

  He shook his head and glanced about the kitchen. Lea had moved back to the counter and was energetically chopping a tomato. The scrape of the knife on the wood block mixed with the muffled voices of the kids outside. “Wouldn’t that have been something,” Norman said. “Bastard might’ve gotten less money than some rich folks would’ve paid, but he could have turned the glyph faster without much risk. Don’t call the fed, or the deal’s off. That’s what the Indian said. His boss figured we’d want that glyph back so bad we’d do whatever he said, and you know what? He was right.”

  Norman turned his head toward the window again, the same longing working beneath the surface of the tightened muscles in his face. “Indian told us we’d be contacted about making the exchange,” he said. “Then Trublood was shot. Last we heard about the petroglyph.”

  “We’d better let Gianelli know the Indian could be back,” Father John said. He’d known Ted Gianelli, the local FBI agent, for five or six years now. He was a good investigator. Like a dog with a bone, Gianelli didn’t give up.

  “No fed.” The councilman took another gulp of coffee. “After Trublood’s murder, there were feds, sheriff’s deputies, police swarming all over the rez. Newspaper stories every day. It was all over the TV. That Indian vanished into thin air, and so did the petroglyph. Probably propped against a wall in Tokyo now, wouldn’t surprise me none. Same thing’s going to happen to the Drowning Man if we go to the fed. News will be all over the moccasin telegraph tomorrow.”

  “Look, Norman,” Father John said, trying to fit together a logical argument. “It’s a different situation now. Nobody’s been murdered.” He paused. Lord, let that be true. “There probably won’t be a lot of publicity. The article in today’s newspaper could be the extent of it.”

  “The gossip will start up, I’m telling you. We tried to keep it quiet about the Drowning Man, and what happened? Big article in the Gazette. Problem is, stealing a petroglyph is a federal crime, so last week, soon’s that ranch hand came to the tribal offices and said the glyph was gone, we had to notify the fed. Two days later, a reporter started nosing around, asking questions. How many glyphs in the canyon? What’re they worth? That white man out at the antiques place on the highway—Duncan Barnes, you know him?—gave the reporter what she was looking for. Glyph’s worth a quarter mil, he tells her. Next thing I know, Gazette’s screaming how thieves stole an ancient petroglyph worth a fortune.”

  Norman raised one hand in a kind of salute before Father John could say anything. “We notify the fed about the Indian, that’ll be all over the papers, too. How there’s a big investigation, and the fed’s looking high and low for the stolen glyph. The Indian will get nervous and disappear like last time, and we’ll never see the Drowning Man again.”

  The councilman went back to his coffee, eyes watching the window over the rim of his mug. The late-afternoon sun glowed in the glass like a neon light. Outside, the kids looked like blurred, dark figures darting for the ball that flew between them.

  Father John sipped at his own coffee. He had the sense that came over him sometimes in the confessional. There was more, something else that Norman hadn’t told him. He waited, giving the Indian as much time as he needed.

  After a long moment, Norman said, “Truth is, Father, petroglyphs aren’t the only artifacts missing. Thieves have been robbing us for some time. Digging in the mounds beneath the glyphs, taking bones and ancient tools. We try to keep it quiet, but news gets out. Probably brought the thieves here looking for a petroglyph, the idea of making some big money. Right now, we have enough problems with the logging that’s gonna start up in the Shoshone Forest. Lumber companies want to widen the road through Red Cliff Canyon so they can drive their trucks up and down. It’ll destroy the canyon.”

  The Arapaho set his coffee mug down hard on the table, and Lea moved back and set her hands on his shoulders again. “We want this glyph back with the people where it belongs,” Norman said. “Can’t put it back in its proper place in the canyon, but we can protect it. Protect the spirit. Keep it in a safe place.”

  “Let Gianelli help you.”

  Nor
man was already shaking his head, as if he’d anticipated the suggestion. “Bottom line, Father. No more publicity and no outsiders trampling over the mountainside. Tribes’ve gotta handle this.”

  Father John finished his coffee. Lea had turned back to the counter and was rinsing dishes under the faucet. The sounds of the kids blurred into the noise of rushing water and clinking glass. After a moment, he said, “There could be more publicity…”

  “There’ll be publicity, all right, if we call in the fed.”

  “Either way, it doesn’t matter. The story in the paper didn’t come from Gianelli. He wouldn’t have gone to the newspaper. The reporter must have come to him, and he’d had to confirm that the petroglyph was missing.”

  “You’re saying somebody tipped off the reporter?”

  “How many people knew the Drowning Man was gone?”

  The councilman shifted sideways away from the window and stared at the doorway that led into the small living room at the front of the house. Patterns of light played over the braided carpet on the vinyl floor. The shadow of a sofa hugged the far wall. Finally, he said, “Joint Business Council. That’s six Arapahos and six Shoshones. Couple of people in the tribal offices.” He shrugged. “Could be more.”

  “The news made it onto the moccasin telegraph,” Father John said. “The Gazette reporter must have heard the gossip and contacted Gianelli. How long will it be before word gets out that the thief wants a quarter-million-dollar ransom? There’ll be another front-page article. Gianelli will read about the Indian in the newspaper.”

  Norman gripped the edge of the table and hauled himself to his feet. He stood still for a moment, black, unseeing eyes moving over the kitchen, chasing a new and unwanted idea in his head now. Then he exchanged a quick, almost imperceptible glance with his wife and stepped around the table. He flung open the back door. A gust of warm air, filled with the scents of dust and sage, floated into the kitchen.

  “Hey,” he called. “Time for supper.” He leaned sideways, pushing the door against the wall with the weight of one shoulder, and waited as the two boys filed past, brown arms swinging at their sides, the knees of their blue jeans gray with smudged dirt.