We don’t know each other, Witover said, but John OMalley told me you worked with him on that Cata homicide on the Zuñi Reservation. He speaks well of you.
I’m glad to hear that. Leaphorn knew it wasn’t true. He and OMalley had worked poorly together and the case, as far as the FBI was concerned, remained open and unsolved.
But Leaphorn was glad that Witover had suddenly chosen to be friendly.
If I show you the file, Id be breaking the rule, Witover said. It was a statement, but it included a question. What, it asked, do, I get in return?
Yes, Leaphorn said. And if I found the helicopter, or found out how to find it, our rules would require me to report to the captain, and he’d inform the chief, and the chief would inform Washington FBI, and then they’d teletype you. It would be quicker if I picked up the telephone and called you directly at your home telephone number but that would break our rules.
Witover’s expression changed very slightly. The corners of his lips edged a millimeter upward. Of course, he said, you cant be tipping people off on their home telephones unless there’s a clear understanding that nobody talks about it later.
Exactly, Leaphorn said. Just as you cant leave files in here with me if you didn’t know Id swear it never happened.
Just a minute, Witover said.
It actually took him almost ten minutes. When he came back through the door he had a bulky file in one hand and his card in the other. He put the file on the desk and handed Leaphorn the card. My home numbers on the back, he said.
Witover sat down again and fingered the cord that held down the file flap. It goes all the way back to Wounded Knee, he said. When the old American Indian Movement took over the place in 1973, one of them was a disbarred lawyer from Oklahoma named Henry Kelongy. He glanced at Leaphorn. You know about the Buffalo Society?
We don’t get cut in for much of that, Leaphorn said. I know what I hear, and what I read in Newsweek.
Um. Well, Kelongy was a fanatic. They call him The Kiowa because he’s half Kiowa Indian. Raised in Anadarko, and got through the University of Oklahoma law school, and served in the Forty-fifth Division in World War Two, and made it up to first lieutenant and then killed somebody in Le Havre on the way home and lost his commission in the court-martial. Some politics after that. Ran for the legislature, worked for a congressman, kept getting more and more militant. Ran an Indian draft-resisters group during the Vietnam war. So forth. Behind all this he was working as a preacher. Started out as a Church of the Nazarene evangelist, and then moved over into the Native American Church, and then started his own offshoot of that. Kept the Native American peyote ceremony, but tossed out the Christianity. Went back to the Sun God or whatever Indians worship. Witover glanced quickly at Leaphorn. I mean whatever Kiowas worship, he amended.
Its complicated, Leaphorn said. I don’t know much about it, but I think Kiowas used the sun as a symbol of the Creator. Actually, he knew quite a bit about it. Religious values had always fascinated Leaphorn, and he’d studied them at Arizona State but just now he wasn’t prepared to educate an FBI agent.
Anyway, Witover continued, to skip a lot of the minor stuff, Kelongy had a couple of brushes with the law, and then he and some of his disciples got active in AIM. Were pretty sure they were the ones who did most of the damage when AIM took over the Bureau of Indian Affairs office in Washington. And then at Wounded Knee, Kelongy was there preaching violence. When the AIM people decided to cancel things, Kelongy raised hell, and called them cowards, and split off.
Witover fished a pack of filtered cigarettes from his pocket, offered one to Leaphorn and lit up. He inhaled, blew out a cloud of blue smoke. Then we started hearing about the Buffalo Society. There was a bombing in Phoenix, with pamphlets left scattered around, all about the Indians killed by soldiers somewhere or other. And some more bombings here and there . . . Witover paused, tapping his fingertips on the desktop, thinking. At Sacramento, and Minneapolis, and Duluth, and one in the South Richmond, I think it was.
And a bank robbery up in Utah, at Ogden, and always pamphlets identifying the Buffalo Society and a bunch of stuff about white atrocities against the Indians. Witover puffed again. And that brings us to the business at Santa Fe. A very skillful piece of business. He glanced at Leaphorn. How much you know about that?
Nothing much that didn’t apply to our part of it, Leaphorn said. Hunting the helicopter.
The afternoon before the robbery, Kelongy checked into the La Fonda and asked for a fifth-floor suite overlooking the plaza. You can see the bank from there. Then He used his own name? Leaphorn was frowning.
No, Witover said. He looked slightly sheepish. We had a tail on him.
Leaphorn nodded, his expression carefully noncommittal. He was imagining Witover trying to write the letter explaining how a man had managed a half-million-dollar robbery while under Witover’s surveillance.
We’ve pretty well put together exactly what happened, Witover went on. He leaned back in the swivel chair, locked his fingers behind his head, and talked with the easy precision of one practiced in delivering oral reports. The Wells Fargo truck had pulled away from the First National Bank on the northwest corner of Santa Fe Plaza at three-ten. At almost exactly three-ten, barriers were placed across arterial streets, detouring traffic from all directions into the narrow downtown streets. As the armored truck moved away from downtown, traffic congealed in a monumental jam behind it. This both occupied police and effectively sealed off the sheriffs and police departments, both in the downtown district. A man in a Santa Fe police uniform and riding a police-model motorcycle put up a barrier in the path of the armored truck, diverting a van ahead of the truck, the truck itself and a following car into Acequia Madre street. Then the barrier was used to block Acequia Madre, preventing local traffic from blundering onto the impending robbery. On the narrow street, lined by high adobe walls, the armored truck was jammed between the van and the car.
Witover leaned forward, stressing his point. All perfectly timed, he said. At about exactly the same time, some sort of car nobody can remember what drove up to the Airco office at the municipal airport. The copter was waiting. Reserved the day before in the name of an engineering company a regular customer. Nobody saw who got out of the car and got into the copter.
Witover shook his head and gestured with both hands. So the car drove away, and the copter flew away, and we don’t even know if the passenger was a man or a woman. It landed on a ridge back in the foothills north of St. Johns College. We know that because people saw it landing. It was on the ground maybe five minutes, and we can presume that while it was on the ground, the money from the Wells Fargo truck was loaded onto it and maybe it took on a couple more passengers.
But how’d they get into the armored truck? Leaphorn said. Isn’t that supposed to be damned near impossible?
Ah, Witover said. Exactly. The pale blue eyes approved Leaphorns question. The armored truck is designed with armed robbery in mind and therefore the people on the inside can keep the people on the outside out. So how did the robbers get in? That brings us to the Buffalo Societies secret weapon. A crazy son-of-a-bitch named Tull.
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 Leaphorns, 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 truck driver 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?