A Thief of Time

'Oh,' the Towering House woman said. 'We had a drunk in here. Where you been?'

'What'd he do? Any damages?'

'She,' the woman said. 'Old Lady George. She went away when she heard me calling the police.'

The cashier's name was Gorman, Chee now remembered. But he was thinking of Old Lady George.

'Which way did she go?'

'Just went,' Mrs. Gorman said. She gestured vaguely. 'Didn't look. I was picking up the cans she knocked over.'

So Chee had gone looking for Old Lady George. He knew her fairly well. She'd been a witness in an automobile theft case he'd worked on -- a very helpful witness. Later, when he was looking for one of her grandsons on an assault warrant, she'd helped him again. Sent the boy down to the station to turn himself in. Besides, she was Streams Come Together Clan, which was linked to Chee's father's clan, which made her a relative. Chee had been raised knowing that you watch out for your relatives.

He had watched out for her, first up and down 550 and then up and down side streets. He found her sitting on a culvert, and talked her into the patrol car, and took her home and turned her over to a worried young woman who he guessed must be a granddaughter. Then he had gone back and established that the motor pool remained intact. At least it seemed to be intact as seen from the highway. But seen from the highway, it hadn't been possible to detect that someone had tinkered with the padlock securing the gate. He heard about that the next day when he reported for work.

Captain Largo's usually big voice was unusually quiet--an ominous sign.

'A backhoe,' Largo said. 'That's what they stole this time. About three tons. Bright yellow. Great big thing. I told Mr. Zah that I had one of my best men watching his place last night. Officer Jim Chee. I told Zah that it must be just another case of forgetting to put it down on the record when somebody borrowed it. You know what he said to me?'

'No sir,' Chee said. 'But nobody stole that on my shift. I was driving back and forth past there the whole time.'

'Really,' Largo said. 'How nice.' He picked up a sheet from the shift squeal report from his desk. He didn't look at it. 'I'm pleased to hear that. Because you know what Zah said to me? He said'--Largo shifted his voice up the scale-- ' Oh, it was stolen last night all right. The guy that runs the service station across the street there told us about it.'' Largo's voice returned to normal. 'This service station man stood there and watchedem drive out with it.'

'Oh,' Chee said, thinking it must have been while he was at the 7-Eleven.

'This Zah is quite a comedian. He told me you'd think sneaking a big yellow backhoe out with one of my policemen watching would be like trying to sneak moonrise past a coyote.'

Chee flushed. He had nothing to say to that. He had heard the simile before somewhere in another form. Hard as sneaking sunrise past a rooster, it had been. A moonrise without a coyote baying was equally impossible, and relating a coyote to Largo's police added a nicely oblique insult. You don't call a Navajo a coyote. The only thing worse is to accuse him of letting his kinfolks starve.

Largo handed Chee the squeal sheet. It confirmed what Zah had told Largo.

Subject Delbert Tsosie informed Officer Shorty that while serving a customer at the Texaco station at approximately 10 P.M. he noticed a man removing the chain from the gate of the motor pool maintenance yard across Highway 550. He observed a truck towing a flatbed trailer drive through the gate into the yard. Subject Tsosie said that approximately fifteen minutes later he noticed the truck driving out the gate towing a machine which he described as probably a backhoe or some sort of trenching machine loaded on the trailer. He said he did not report this to police because he presumed tribal employees had come to get the equipment to deal with some sort of emergency.

'That must have been while I was looking for Old Lady George,' Chee said. He explained, hurrying through the last stages because of Largo's expression.

'Get to work,' Largo said, 'and leave this alone. Sergeant Benally will be chasing the backhoe. Don't mess with it.'

That was Tuesday morning and should have been the very bottom of the week. The pits. It would have been, perhaps, had not Chee driven past the Texaco station on 550 and seen Delbert Tsosie stacking tires. Benally was handling it, but Chee sometimes bought gasoline from Tsosie. No harm in stopping to talk.

'No,' Tsosie said. 'Didn't see either one of them well enough to recognize `em. But you could see one was Dineh -- tall, skinny Navajo. Had on a cowboy hat. I know a lot of 'em that works at the motor pool. They come over here and use the Coke machine and buy candy.

Wasn't none I knew and I was thinking it was a funny time to be coming to work. But I thought they must have forgotten something and was coming for it. And when I saw the backhoe I figured some pipe broke somewhere. Emergency, you know.' Tsosie shrugged.

'You didn't recognize anybody?'

'Bad light.'

'Guy in the truck. You see him at all?'

'Not in the truck,' Tsosie said. 'The skinny Navajo was driving the truck. This guy was following in a sedan. Plymouth two-door. About a `70, '71 maybe. Dark blue but they was doing some bodywork on it. Had an off-color right front fender. Looked white or gray. Maybe primer coat. And lots of patches here and there, like they was getting ready to paint it.'

'Driver not a Navajo?'

'Navajo driving the truck. Belagana driving the Plymouth. And the white guy, I just barely got a look at him. They all sort of look alike anyway. All I notice is freckles and sunburn.'

'Big or little?'

Tsosie thought. 'About average. Maybe sort of short and stocky.'

'What color hair?'

'Had a cap on. Baseball cap. With a bill.'

None of which would have mattered since Benally was handling it, and Tsosie had already told Benally all of this, and probably more. But Saturday morning Chee saw the Plymouth two-door.

It was dark blue, about a 70 model. When it passed him going in the other direction -- Shiprock-bound on 550 -- he saw the mismatched front fender and the patches of primer paint on its doors and the baseball cap on the head of the white man driving it. Without a thought, Chee did a U-turn across the bumpy divider.

He was driving Janet Pete's car. Not exactly Janet Pete's car. Janet had put down earnest money on a Buick Riviera at Quality Pre-owned Cars in Farmington and had asked Chee to test-drive it for her. She had to go to Phoenix Friday and when she got back Monday she wanted to close the deal.

'I guess I've already decided,' Janet had told him. 'It has everything I need and only fourteen thousand miles on it and the price seems reasonable and he's giving me a thousand dollars on my old Datsun and that seems fair.'

To Chee the thousand for the Datsun seemed enough more than fair to arouse suspicion. Janet's Datsun was a junker. But it was clear that Janet was not going to be receptive to discouraging words. She described the Buick as 'absolutely beautiful.' As she described it, the lawyer in Janet Pete fell away. The girl emerged through the delight and enthusiasm, and Janet Pete became absolutely beautiful herself.

'It has the prettiest blue plush upholstery. Lovely color. Dark blue outside with a real delicate pinstripe down the side, and the chrome is just right.' She looked slightly guilty at this. 'I don't usually like chrome,' she said. 'But this…' She performed a gesture with shoulder and face that depreciated this lapse from taste. '… But this… well, I just love it.'

She paused, examining Chee and transforming herself from girl to lawyer. 'I thought maybe you would check it out for me. You drive all the time and you know all about mechanical things. If you don't mind doing it, and there's something seriously wrong with the engine, or something like that, then I could…'

She had left the awful statement unfinished. And Chee had accepted the keys and said sure, he'd be glad to do it. Which wasn't exactly the case. If there was something seriously wrong with the engine, telling her about it wasn't going to make him popular with Janet Pete. And Chee wanted to be popular. He wondered about her. He wondered about a woman lawyer. To be more precise, he wondered if Janet Pete, or any woman, could fill the gap Mary Landon seemed to be leaving in his life.