At Ease with the Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

seat.”
    There are two client chairs in the office. I directed him to one and took the other myself. “What’s up?” I asked him.
    â€œWell,” he said, “I’d like your help.”
    I was a bit surprised. He hadn’t struck me, back at Asayi, as a man who’d need anybody’s help with anything. But sooner or later, I suppose, it’s something we all need. “Sure,” I said. “If I can.”
    He slipped a pipe and a leather tobacco pouch from the right-hand pocket of his suit coat. “Okay to smoke?”
    â€œBe my guest.”
    He opened the pouch, pinched some tobacco, twisted it into the pipe. “How much do you charge to find someone?”
    â€œMissing person? Depends. Sometimes all it takes is a couple of phone calls. Who’s missing?”
    â€œRelative of a woman I know.” He screwed some more tobacco into the bowl.
    â€œMan or woman?”
    â€œMan.” Tamping tobacco down with his thumb.
    â€œHow long’s he been missing?”
    He put the pipe stem between his teeth. From his left-hand coat pocket he pulled a red Bic lighter. He lighted it, held the flame to the bowl, the flame flared as he puffed. “Since Nineteen twenty-five,” he said.
    I sat back, wondering how to phrase it politely. “Well, Daniel,” I said. “That’s a long time ago. He could be dead by now.”
    The faint smile came again, a fractional movement of the lips against the pipe stem. “Oh, he is. He was dead then too.”

3
    D ead,” Rita said.
    â€œSince Eighteen sixty-six,” I told her. “How’s your Navajo history?”
    It was evening. I’d closed the office, swam my mile in the municipal pool, hammered down a quick green chili stew at the Plaza Restaurant, and then driven up to Rita’s. The two of us were sipping mulled claret on the living room sofa. The air was cozy with the scents of cinnamon and clove, and a fire snapped and flapped in the big kiva fireplace across the darkened room. Shadows slid along the Persian carpet. Outside, beyond the picture window, a blanket of starlit snow glowed between the trees. Rita was wearing a light blue skirt, a silk blouse the color of the summertime sky, and a light blue cashmere cardigan. She looked fairly cozy herself.
    She smiled and said, “How was yours, before you talked to Daniel Begay?”
    â€œTerrific,” I lied. “You remember Kit Carson?”
    She sipped at her mug of claret. “Vividly.”
    â€œThen you remember that in Eighteen sixty-four he rounded up all the Navajos in the Southwest. Most of them were hiding out in Canyon de Chelly—apparently, the Canyon was a kind of focal point for the tribe. Carson had two other guys, Pfeiffer and Carey, go through the place, burning down the hogans and the orchards. Anyway, once he had them all together, maybe six thousand of them, Carson came back to Santa Fe. Carey was put in charge of the operation. He was the one who organized the walk to Fort Sumner.”
    Holding the mug in her lap with both hands, she nodded. “The Long Walk. Three hundred miles. But not all of them made it.”
    â€œNo. But the thing is, Carson hadn’t really gotten all the Navajos. Some of them managed to slip away, and after Carson left they sneaked back into the Canyon. They stayed there until the others came back in Eighteen sixty-eight.”
    â€œAnd this man, the one Daniel Begay wants you to find, was one of those.”
    â€œRight. He died in ’sixty-six, and he was buried there in the Canyon.”
    â€œDoes he have a name?”
    â€œGanado.”
    She nodded. “His body reappeared in Nineteen twenty-five?”
    I sipped at my wine. “Yeah. There was a guy digging in the Canyon then, an archaeologist.”
    Rita nodded. “David Bedford.”
    I frowned. “Stop me if you’ve heard this before, Rita.”
    She smiled. “He was famous,