LITMIR.BIZ

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work. He decided to walk over to the Great Burrito Company for a cup of coffee and maybe something to eat.

      The telephone rang before he could leave.

      “Fidel Rodriguez from the Independent on line two,” Linda said from the front desk.

      “Fernando, this is Fidel. I’m calling to find out if there’s anything new in the Soto case.”

      Fernando sighed. “Nothing yet.”

      “Yeah?” Fidel sounded skeptical, as though insinuating he was withholding something.

      “Listen, will you do me a favor?” He changed the subject. “I need some background information. Do you know what an ahayu:da is?”

      “You mean the Zuni war god?”

      “Exactly. The Zuni carve the wooden figures and then place them in shrines on Zuni land. Sometimes the figures are stolen and end up in museums or private collections. Could you check your files at the Independent for any stories or photographs? Recent stories, especially.”

      “No problem. What are you looking for? Is there a connection between Soto’s murder and a stolen ahayu:da?”

      “Maybe. Two Zunis came to see me this morning. They think Soto was trying to sell an ahayu:da on the black market.” He could hear Fidel scribbling notes at the other end of the line.

      “I’ll be over in a few minutes.” He hung up quickly before Fidel could ask any more questions.

      On his way out he winked at Linda.

      She smiled and shook her head. “Don’t start.”

      He walked down to the Great Burrito Company and ordered a cup of coffee to go, ignoring the tourists sitting at the outside tables. He took the coffee up Marcy Street to the office of the Independent. Only ten minutes had passed since he’d hung up the phone, but that ought to be enough time. If Fidel was as efficient as he suspected.

      “Bueñas Dias,” he said to Adellita, the receptionist, as he walked into the newsroom.

      Adellita smiled, a young woman with streaks of red sprayed in her hair and tattoos on her bare arms. He didn’t get it. Why would anyone want sprayed red hair? Or tattoos on their arms?

      Fidel waved him over to his terminal. “We have one photo in our file. It’s a reproduction of a nineteen twenty-five photograph taken by Edward S. Curtis. The original comes from the Museum of New Mexico Photo Archives. I’ll give you the negative number and our librarian will make you a copy.”

      “Thanks.” He spilled coffee on the carpet as he took a seat at the next terminal.

      “The most recent story I can find dates from this past spring when an ahayu:da was stolen from its shrine near Thunder Mountain on the Zuni Reservation. As far as I know, it hasn’t been recovered. Before that we go back two years, when an ahayu:da turned up in a Paris auction house. Paris, France. The Zuni took the auction house to court and argued that the bill of sale for the figure was invalid because sacred tribal objects were communal property and could not be sold by an individual. The case is still making its way through the courts.”

      “Nothing more recent?”

      Fidel punched a few more keys at his terminal and then shook his head. “Wait, here’s something else. Several years ago the Zuni successfully pressured the Smithsonian Museum to return an ahayu:da that had been part of the Frank H. Cushing Collection at the Smithsonian.”

      He squinted at the monitor, trying to read the screen. “The what?”

      “The Frank H. Cushing Collection. You know, the ethnologist who lived at Zuni Pueblo in the eighteen eigthies.”

      While they talked, a young woman with long blond hair tied behind her head in a ponytail walked into the newsroom. “Here’s a copy of the photo you wanted.”

      “Thanks, Anne.”

      Fernando scooted his chair closer. “So that’s what an ahayu:da looks like. I’ll be damned.”

      “See, there are actually two kinds, Big Brother and Little Brother.”

      He studied the black and white photograph that showed a pile of ahayu:da in varying stages of decomposition. Two of the carved figures stood erect, rising out of a small patch of dried grass and prickly pear cactus, a Big Brother in front and a Little Brother behind.

      Just as Fidel said, the two figures were entirely different. Big Brother displayed an elongated, helmet-like face and what looked like a phallus sticking straight out from its middle. More abstract and unformed, Little Brother had no face or phallus, but instead a series of geometric shapes carved on its body—half moons, circles, and crosses.

      Fidel laughed. “This is supposed to be an umbilical cord.” He pointed to Big Brother. “In spite of what it looks like.”

      But he wasn’t looking at Big Brother. He couldn’t take his eyes away from the symbols carved on Little Brother.

      Where had he seen them before? Then he remembered. The very same symbols were drawn in the sand at Jacoñita, in the circle of the teepee.

      4

      He had never been inside Sabado Indian Arts on the Plaza, one of the newer galleries in Santa Fe. He found himself sitting in the back office with store manager Wanda LeClair, a small shapely woman with strawberry blond hair wearing a tight black dress that revealed every curve. Like Soto, she was drop dead gorgeous, one of the Beautiful People. Except they weren’t so beautiful now. Soto was dead and she had been weeping nonstop since he’d delivered the news about her boss. To escape her blubbering, he walked into Soto’s office and took a seat at the desk. Unfortunately, she followed him, bringing with her a box of tissues. She sat on the black leather sofa wiping her eyes with one tissue after another.

      The sound of women crying made him uncomfortable. Something to do with male guilt, he supposed, though he didn’t really care to explore the subterranean levels of the male psyche, his in particular. Too much self-knowledge could be a dangerous thing.

      He knew very well that he should say something consoling to her, since he’d been the indirect agent of her grief, having delivered the bad news. Her decision to follow him into the office meant that she expected him to offer comfort of some sort. But what, precisely, could he say or do? Bring Soto back to life? If he could do that, he wouldn’t be wasting his time working for the Santa Fe Police Department.

      “I’m sorry,” he said finally. It wasn’t much, but enough to break the impasse.

      She nodded and reached for another tissue. “I just can’t believe it. Everyone loved Michael. He was such a nice guy.”

      “Not everyone.”

      She looked at him in horror, as though he’d uttered something disrespectful to the dead, something obscene.

      Taken aback by her reaction, he fumbled for the right words. “What I mean is, Soto had at least one enemy. Can you think of anyone who might have had a reason to kill him? A dissatisfied customer, perhaps.”

      She shook her head and brushed the hair out of her eyes, no longer weeping.

      “Or, let’s say someone who wanted to get back a sacred tribal object...one that Soto might have been selling on the black market—an ahayu:da, for example?”

      “What’s that? You mean the Zuni War god? The carving?”

      “Correct.” He explained about the stolen ahayu:da and the letter Suino and Naranjo had shown him earlier.

      She shook her head again. “I don’t believe it. Michael wasn’t the type to deal in black market art. Why would he? He made a lot of money selling legal Indian art.”

      He shrugged, not getting a read on this woman. Was she as innocent as she pretended? Or was she covering up her involvement in Soto’s black market business?

      “Well,” he said finally. “We

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