Read Online Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 04] by jpg] People Of Darkness (v1) [html - Free Book Online Page A

success but perfection. The job done. No witnesses. No evidence. No tracks. Perfection. And always Boxholder's voice, warm and friendly, congratulating him. This time there had been no congratulations. First there had been only silence, and then Boxholder's voice was cold.
    "Give me the number you're calling from. Wait right there. I'll call the client and call you back. Be there."
    "Tell him I won't accept the fee," Colton had said. "Tell him I'll finish the job."
    "You just wait," Boxholder said.
    Colton had waited. It was more than four hours before the telephone rang.
    "Your man was checking into the hospital," Boxholder said. "He's in now. We're to just keep an eye on things and when he dies, you get rid of the body. Get it right away and get rid of it."
    "My God," Colton said. "I baby-sit this guy until he dies?"
    "Not long," Boxholder said. "He's got a kind of cancer that works fast."
    "Then why…" Colton let the question trail off.
    "Maybe it doesn't work fast enough," Boxholder said. "Do you care?"
    "No," Colton said. "I guess not."
    But it seemed curious then, and it seemed curious now, this business of getting rid of the body. Curious, but well done. The grave filled. The rotting mattress pulled across it and the trash scattered over the mattress. No one would ever find the body of Emerson Charley. Reporting time was noon tomorrow. Colton anticipated it happily. Boxholder would be pleased.

----
Chapter Eleven
    « ^ »
    J im chee had rolled the two-hundred-dollar check from Ben Vines and the five one-hundred-dollar bills from the envelope Mrs. Vines had handed him into a tight cylinder. It was not much larger than a cigaret. Each night he dropped the tube into one of the boots beside his bed. Each morning, after he'd said his brief prayer of greeting to the dawning day, he shook the tube out of the boot and considered what to do with it. And each morning he finally stuck the tube back into his shirt pocket, thereby signaling that the matter remained undecided. On the fourth morning, Chee noticed that the edge of the check was frayed. He unrolled the tube, put check and cash side by side on his table, and stared at them.
    Two hundred dollars was too much to be offered for the little trouble he'd been involved in. Worse, why would Mrs. Vines offer him three thousand dollars to recover a box she had stolen herself? For those as inconceivably rich as the Vineses the money would be relatively meaningless. But his uncle had warned him against that kind of thinking.
    "Don't think a man don't care about one goat because he's got a thousand of 'em," Hosteen Nakai would say. "He's got a thousand because he cares more about goats than he cares about his relatives." In other words, don't expect the rich to be generous.
    And what would his uncle advise him to do about this particular money? Chee grinned, thinking about it. There'd be no advice—not directly. There'd be a hundred questions: Which one was lying? What motivated the large payments? Why did the Checkerboard Navajos think Vines was a witch? Or did they? How was the Charley outfit mixed into this affair? And when Chee could offer no answers, Hosteen Nakai would smile at him and remind him of what he had told Chee a long time ago. He'd told Chee he had to understand white people.
    Chee used his two forefingers to tap the stack of currency into a neat pile. Mrs. Vines had lied to him, at least a little. He picked up the check and looked at B. J. Vines' bold signature. Vines' story had been almost purely lies. Chee folded the check and slid it into the credit card pocket of his billfold. He put the currency in the cash compartment. He would talk to Tomas Charley and see what he could learn.
    Talking to Tomas Charley meant finding him. Becenti had remembered only that he lived somewhere beyond the eastern limits of the Checkerboard—somewhere near Mount Taylor. Chee made telephone calls. Shortly before noon he learned that Charley was employed by Kerrmac Nuclear Fuels.