The Shape Shifter (21 page)

“You say his name ‘Yer Shua,’” Vang said, pronouncing the syllables very slowly and repeating them. “I have heard about Mohammed. They talk about him some on the television news. About the war in Iraq. But Yer Shua was different, I think. He was part God and part man, I think. I remember they told about him being a farmer like the rest of the Hmong people, and raising pigs and having a whole lot of wives. And he was the one who tried THE SHAPE SHIFTER

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to take care of the Hmong people. I mean he tried to protect them.”

“We Navajos have what we call
yei,
” Leaphorn said.

“Powerful, like spirits, but good. And the
belagaana
—

white people—they have . . . well it depends on whether they’re Christian, or Jewish, or what. Anyway, their bad supernatural beings are devils, or witches, or some other names. Good ones are angels.”

They crossed the Continental Divide on Navajo Route 9 as Leaphorn was covering this side of theology, and now the Torreon ridge rose about six miles ahead, and beyond it Torreon arroyo and Torreon itself, with its chapter house and maybe, Leaphorn guessed, something like 150 residents scattered around the valley. Above it all, rising like a great sunlit thumb against a background of scattered clouds some thirty miles to the southeast, was Cabezon Peak. The thoughts Leaphorn had been forming jelled into a sudden decision. He slowed, pulled the vehicle off to the side where a ranch entry road had widened the shoulder.

“There’s Torreon,” he told Vang, pointing at the scattered buildings far ahead. “Before we get there, let’s talk about what we’re doing there.” He released his seat belt and opened the car door.

“Talk?” Vang said. “What we talk about?”

“I want to hear some more about what you’ve been telling me about the Hmong, for one thing,” Leaphorn said. “And if you’re interested, I’ll tell you more about the Dineh and about our traditional relationship with God and the spirits. And then we ought to plan what we’re going to do about finding Mr. Delonie. And we should stretch our legs a little. I’m getting old, and I get stiff.”
190

TONY HILLERMAN

“Sure,” Vang said.

Leaphorn got out, stretched, leaned against the fender, admired the view, planning his tactics. Vang joined him, glanced at Leaphorn inquiringly, and leaned against the car door.

“Not many people,” Leaphorn said. “A few down below, then miles and miles and miles in every direction, no sign of people.” He pointed down the road toward the village. “ ‘Torreon’ means tower, and when that little valley was first occupied by people, they built one out of stones because enemies kept attacking them.” Vang considered that. “Like what they say about Hmong. Everywhere we went people attacked us.” He glanced at Leaphorn, a wry smile. “We even had a god like that. His name was Nau Yong, and they called him

‘the Savage One’ because what he liked to do was capture lots of Hmong people, and tear them apart and drink their blood.” Vang grimaced. “Like he was a great tiger in the forest. They said he was the chief of all the bad spirits.

Sort of like their king.”

Leaphorn considered this. “Did he live on top of a mountain?” Leaphorn asked.

Vang looked surprised. “How did you know?”

“Maybe I read it somewhere,” Leaphorn said. “But that’s usually how it worked.”

He pointed toward the south, where Mount Taylor’s crest was visible against the horizon. “That’s our Sacred Mountain of the South, our boundary marker. According to my clan’s traditions, it was the home of a supernatural named ‘Ye-iitsoh.’ He was our version of your, ah, Nau Yong. Sort of in charge of all the vestiges of greed, hatred, malice, selfishness, cruelty, and so forth. The way THE SHAPE SHIFTER

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our origin worked, our First Man spirit when he was escaping the flood that forced us to move up here, he sent a diving bird back into the water to recover what he called his ‘way to make money.’ In other words, it contained everything that caused the greed and selfishness.” Leaphorn was watching Tommy Vang’s expression through every word of this.

“Do you understand?” he asked.

“Sure,” Vang said. He threw out his hands. “Everybody fighting everybody else to collect more money, bigger car, bigger house, get famous on television. Get to the top of that mountain yourself. Step on the Hmong people. Climb over them.”

Leaphorn chuckled. “That’s the general idea.”

“I heard that you Navajo say the way to find witches, anybody evil, is to look for people who have more than they need and their kinfolks are hungry.” Leaphorn nodded. “And also according to our origin story, two good
yei
decided to go around this glittering world and eliminate all the bad
yei
to make this place safe for regular humans, like you and me, to live here.

They killed the Ye-iitsoh up on the mountain, cut his head off.”

Leaphorn pointed at Cabezon Peak. “That’s his head,” he said. “It rolled all the way down there and turned into stone. And Ye-iitsoh’s blood flowed down the other side of the mountain and dried into all the back lava flow along the highway around Grants.”

“So I guess everybody has this idea about evil. Pretty much alike,” Vang said.

“And people who fight evil, too,” Leaphorn said.

“Sometimes that’s got to be policemen.”
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TONY HILLERMAN

Vang looked at him. “Like you?”

Leaphorn considered that. “Maybe like both of us,” he said. “I’m going to ask you a bunch of questions.”

“Oh,” Vang said. And thought for a moment. “What do I know?”

“First, when Mr. Delos brought you from Asia, you came to San Francisco, right?”

“Yes. We stayed in a hotel there.”

“What year was that?”

“Year?” He shook his head.

“Then how old were you?”

“I was ten. Or maybe eleven. Mr. Delos had to buy me some new clothes because I had gotten a little bigger.”

“And what did you do at the hotel?”

“A woman came in every day. A Chinese woman. And she would help me some with learning better English.

Like we would watch the children’s program on television, and she would help explain. And then she started teaching me how to cook, and how to iron shirts, and how to keep everything neat and clean. Things like that. And sometimes she would take me out in a taxicab and show me the city. And every evening we would sort of plan a dinner if Mr. Delos was going to be home, and she would teach me how to cook it. And then I would put out the plates and the silver, and she would go.” Vang looked at Leaphorn, smiling. “That was fun. And good, good food.”

“She didn’t stay at night.”

“No. No. Just daytime. Five days a week. That was for maybe the first year. Then Mr. Delos thought I was ready to go to cooking school and I would spend my daytimes at a sort of restaurant-bakery and food store. The boss there was from Manila. A nice man, and he knew something THE SHAPE SHIFTER

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about Hmong people, but the other language he spoke was sometimes Spanish and sometimes a sort of tribal speech. From his island, I think.”

“Were you still living in the hotel?”

“Oh, no. We moved into an apartment building. Close enough so I could walk down to where I was working.”

“And what was Mr. Delos doing?”

“He was gone away most of the time. Sometimes people would come there to see him, and Mr. Delos would tell me to plan a meal for them, buy the wine, all that. I would put flowers on the table. Make everything nice. Put on this sort of apron and white cap he bought for me, and be the waiter. I enjoyed that.”

“Gone most of the time?” Leaphorn said. “For days, or weeks, or months? Do you know where?”

“Usually just a few days, but sometimes for a long time. Once for more than a month. I think that time, he had gone to Phoenix, and another time he was in San Diego, and once it was Albuquerque.”

“Did he always tell you where he was going?”

“No, but usually, after he had taught me how to do it, he was having me arrange the trip for him.” Vang was smiling again. “He said I was his butler-valet. Like the man in the hotel lobbies who does all the arranging for you.”

“You called the travel agencies, worked out the schedule, bought the tickets, everything?”

“Sure,” Vang said. “Mr. Delos always had me call the same agency. There was a woman there. Mrs. Jackson.

Always first class. And she knew all about where he liked to sit, that he liked late flights. If he wanted to have a car waiting for him. All those sort of things.”
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TONY HILLERMAN

“You just gave her the credit card number? Or what?”

“Yes. Well, no. She had the number. She say: ‘Mr.

Vang, do I just put this on his regular business card.’ And then she would e-mail the paper to get him on the air-plane and I would print it out for him.”

“Overseas flights, too. Or was he making any of them?”

“Yes. Not many though. One to Mexico City. One to Manila. One to London, but I think he had me cancel that.”

“She handled the visas, too. “

“Sure,” Vang said. “Very nice lady.”

Leaphorn nodded, thinking of the benefits of the very rich.

“Sometimes there would be two tickets. Because he would take me along to take care of things for him if he was staying several days.”

Leaphorn was silent a moment, considering that.

“She handled your visa for you when you needed one?

Tommy, did Mr. Delos get you naturalized. As an American citizen, I mean. Were you sworn in and all that?”

“Oh yes,” Tommy Vang said. “That was exciting. It was when I was twenty-one years old. The same day I registered so I could vote.”

“Several years before that—I’d say when you were about fifteen or sixteen—was Mr. Delos away for a long period of time? Maybe as long as a year?”

“Oh, it was longer than that,” Tommy Vang said. “For about five years, he was gone most of the time. Sometimes he’d call about the mail, or messages. And then he would call and tell me to meet him at the airport, and THE SHAPE SHIFTER

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he’d be home for maybe a week and then he’d have to leave again.”

“You just stayed at the apartment?”

“And worked for Mr. Martinez, at his bakery, restaurant place.” He produced a wry sounding laugh. “Not good times. I watched television, and went for walks, and worked a lot. Nobody to talk to. Spent some time at the li-brary trying to learn something about what had happened to the Hmong people.”

“And thinking about going home?”

“No money,” Tommy Vang said. “Sometimes I tried to talk to Mr. Delos about that, but he would just say when everything was finished here, he would take me back himself.”

“He never paid you any salary?”

“He said it was just like he was my daddy. He gave me my clothes, my home, my food, everything I need. Had me taught things. Just like I was his son.” Leaphorn looked at Tommy. Yes, that statement seemed serious. It also seemed terrible.

“Time to get moving again,” he said. “Mr. Delonie will be getting home from wherever he works about now. Time to get back on the road. Get down to Torreon and find out where he lives.”

Fastening his seat belt, Leaphorn noticed Tommy was staring at him. Tommy frowned, gestured toward the glove box.

“Your telephone,” he said. “I think I hear it ringing in there.”

Leaphorn got it out, flipped it open. Punched the wrong button. Punched the proper one. Listened.

“Hello?”

196

TONY HILLERMAN

“Is this Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn?” a voice asked.

“Ted Rostic asked me to call you about an obituary. I’m Carter Bradley, and I guess I’ve got some bad news for you.” Bradley chuckled. “Or maybe it’s good news.”

“About Totter?” Leaphorn said.

“Yeah. Saint Anthony’s Hospital records said they hadn’t admitted anyone named Totter. Not that year anyway. Hope I got the date right.” He repeated it.

“That’s right,” Leaphorn said.

“Had a Tyler die a few weeks after that date,” Bradley said. “But that was a woman.”

“I wonder if whoever sent the obituary to the paper had the hospital right. Seems unlikely, but you—”

“Well, the obituary said this Totter was buried in the Veterans Administration cemetery. Turns out he wasn’t.

No record of it, and the VA keeps good records.”

“Well, I thank you,” Leaphorn said. “I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“I am,” Bradley said. “Why would anybody pull a stunt like that?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know,” Leaphorn said. “Did you call Ted Rostic?”

“I did,” Bradley said. “He didn’t know either. But he didn’t sound surprised either.”

Leaphorn pulled back onto the highway, heading for Torreon, thinking how he’d have to handle this. Tommy Vang was watching him, looking curious.

Leaphorn sighed.

“Tommy,” he said. “I am going to tell you some very important things. Very serious for you and other people, too.

That call was about Mr. Totter, the man who had that famous rug hanging on Mr. Delos’s wall. You know about that?” THE SHAPE SHIFTER

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“I heard something about it,” Tommy said. “About his gallery being burned, but somehow the carpet being saved. And about Mr. Totter going away and dying, and being buried.”

“That call was from an old retired newspaper reporter. Somebody about like me. He checked for me back in Oklahoma where Mr. Totter was supposed to have gone. But Mr. Bradley found out that Mr. Totter didn’t die in that hospital there. And he hasn’t been buried.”

“Oh,” Tommy said, looking surprised, awaiting an explanation.

“I think he is still alive. And I think he is a very dangerous man.”

“Ah,” Tommy said, and raised his eyebrows.

“You’re not going to like hearing what I’m going to tell you, Tommy. And I can’t prove a lot of it. But when we find Mr. Delonie, I’m going to tell him all this, too. And maybe he’s the one who can prove whether I’m wrong or right.” He shrugged. “Probably the only one, for that matter—”

“I guess this is all about what Mr. Delos has been doing with those cherries?” Tommy Vang said. His tone sad.

“Yes, and more than that. In a way, I guess it’s about all these religious things we’ve been talking about. About the chief of the evil spirits you Hmong call Nau Yong.”