Cyber Way Page 10

  “So y’all don’t make any medicine paintings?” Moody was surprised how naturally the question came to mind.

  Laughter looked at him as if he were crazy. “Are you kidding? Even if I knew how, I wouldn’t have time for it. Bill and I sell our work all over the world. I don’t mean to imply that we’re not respectful of it, but sandpainting can be art in the pure sense as well as the basis for traditional medicine. We develop and incorporate many of our own ideas into each painting, though it’s nice to have the original designs to use as a starting point.” Abruptly he hesitated, staring at the monitor.

  “Wait a minute.”

  Carefully he backtrawled until he found the image he wanted. It was difficult to make out details because the sandpainting was so large. Using the Widow, he focused on specific sections, enlarging them for a better view.

  Moody grabbed the fax and held it out in front of him, placing it tangent to the monitor visually if not physically. Ooljee didn’t need to see the copy.

  “That’s it, or if it’s not, then it’s something awfully damn similar. ” Moody eyed Red Laughter. “You said your father only did paintings for medicine.”

  “And for my file, because my mother insisted on it. He was very reluctant to do it. He always grumbled.”

  “He never made anything for commercial sale?”

  “Not intentionally. But”—Laughter thought hard—“he did render a few of the more complicated ones on wood, so I could be sure to make a good copy for the records.”

  “What happened to those?”

  “I still have some of them.”

  “Some?”

  Red Laughter looked out the darkened window. “There was a time when we needed money badly. That’s when I think my mother sold one or two of the paintings. I remember there was yelling about it. You must understand, my father was a hatathli. But people offered her a lot of money.” He turned back to the monitor. “This might have been one of those.” He enlarged the edge. “See, it’s done on wood, not on earth. A very uncommon design. Let’s see what the accompanying text has to say. I always tried to make a record of what my father said about each painting.” He thumbed the Widow, and a text window appeared in the lower left quadrant of the monitor. It was in English, for which Moody was grateful.

  “This sandpainting,” it informed them in obsolete two-D font, “is from a Way which has been forgotten. I remember only that it was an important Way. It was taught to me by my father, who learned it from his father, who learned it from one whose true name I do not know and which can only be guessed at. Like many of the Ways which the young people have forgotten, it is a very old Way. I put it down here so it will not join the forgotten, even though it seems to be of no use in medicine, since no one knows what ceremony it is a part of.”

  “My grandfather’s words.” Bill Laughter was solemn. “None of the museum specialists or academics I showed this to has any idea what Way it is from,” Ooljee informed their hosts.

  “Then it is truly from a forgotten one.” Bill Laughter looked at Moody. “The simplest of the traditional Ways is unbelievably complicated. Elements and devices are swapped between them whenever the resident hatathli thinks it expedient.”

  “Not all is forgotten.” The elder Laughter generated a pointer within the Widow, used it to circle a substantial portion of the center-right section of the painting. “This whole piece here; it I know. The colors are strange and so is some of the design, but it is still recognizable.”

  Moody tried and failed to make any sense of what the father had isolated. “What is it?” he finally asked exas-peratedly.

  “A painting within a painting, called ‘Scavenger Being Carried Through the Skyhole by Eagles and Hawks Assisted by Snakes with Bird Power.’”

  “I can see the bird shapes,” Moody conceded.

  Bill Laughter took control of the spinner, isolating a long, impossibly attenuated human figure within the painting. “That’s Scavenger in the middle. The figures on either side of him are snakes. See the feathers they’ve been given, here and here? Bird power. As for the birds themselves, there are many kinds represented: big black hawks; black and white eagles; white hawks; big blue hawks; yellow-tailed, bald eagles. Even the guardians are snakes with bird power.

  “These eagles on either side of the Scavenger figure, see how they’re linked by ropes of rainbow and lightning?” The pointer moved. “But these lines here I don’t recognize, or these small shapes. They shouldn’t be in this painting. And these designs just outside, that link it to the rest of the overall, larger work, I don’t recognize them at all. They could all be personal embellishments, but an old hatathli like Grandfather, I don’t know how much he’d go in for that kind of thing.”

  “Maybe he was in an unusually artistic mood the day he made this one,” the detective blithely suggested.

  “Embellishing was not unknown in my father’s time, or even before it. Hatathlis can be as individual as their medicine.” Red Laughter rubbed his chin. “It is just that it was not like him. I do not remember him doing this particular sandpainting, but it is here in the files, so that means he must have done it. Grandmother probably put it here. She’s the one who taught me the importance of keeping good records.”

  “The Scavenger portion,” the younger Laughter explained, “is from the Bead Chant, but the rest of it is a total blank to me.”

  Moody was squinting at the monitor, trying to will himself to make sense of it. “How do you tell the snakes and the lightning apart?”

  “Sometimes you don’t. In our mythology they can be one and the same.”

  “What about this business of a ‘skyhole’?”

  Red Laughter sighed. “I do not want to go into the whole Way. It’s very complicated and uses many paintings. There used to be a fire dance involved, but—” He shrugged. “Today young people go to different kinds of dances.”

  “At least we found it.” There was satisfaction in Ooljee’s voice.

  “Let’s go back to the kitchen.” Bill Laughter switched off the zenat and mollybox, put the spinner back on the crowded desk.

  Ooljee wanted to talk sandpainting, while Moody was much more interested in finding out if there might be a way to trace the original sale. He found himself talking to the younger Laughter while Ooljee engaged the elder at the kitchen table.

  “What about that old building we saw coming in?” he asked, by way of making casual conversation.

  “My grandfather’s. We maintain it for tradition’s sake. Also it’s nice just to go inside sometimes and sit on the floor and do nothing. Some of Grandfather’s things are still there and, well, it takes you back.”

  Moody remembered the house he’d been raised in, back in Mississippi. Tin roof, wooden screen door always in need of repair, a porch slowly subsiding toward the Gulf. He understood.

  “How come,” he wondered, studying the fax and sipping coffee, “you and your father haven’t reproduced this design? It’s sure enough attractive.”

  “And much too complex to be a cost-effective proposition.” Laughter traced the intricate patterns with a finger. “Besides, it doesn’t come with a convenient, easy to understand explanation. Tourists need that sort of thing. They like plenty of yeis, rainbows, the four sacred plants. Not complex interconnected abstracts. We’re doing fine. No reason to make something too complicated to earn back the time and effort spent on it. Not when you can do com, beans, squash, and tobacco over and over again and come out way ahead.

  “Oh, every once in a while Dad and I will do something different, but it’s usually of our own invention, and to fill a prepaid order. Remember, sand is just the medium, not the art. In any case, we’d never do anything this big on spec.”

  Moody glanced around the kitchen. “Seems to me you could afford the time.”

  “Sure we could. We just don’t want to. Dad’s got a forty-foot twin GE Craft catamaran docked down at Puerto Penasco. You have any idea what the upkeep is on a sucker like that? Come to think of it, y
ou’re from Florida, so you probably do. Doesn’t leave him a lot of time to play at being an artist. We run a business here.

  “Not that we don’t have respect for tradition; we do. You don’t see us turning out any of the pornographic sand-paintings that show up in downtown Ganado or Gallup. Then there are the computer games based on the stories of the Holy People. We wouldn’t have anything to do with stuff like that. So we feel pretty good about what we do.” His attitude had turned almost belligerent. Moody hastened to calm him.

  “I understand, I was just asking. We’re trying to find a motive in all this and we’re not having a lot of luck so far. So sometimes you’ve got to ask some awkward questions. For example, if the Kettrick design was the only one of its kind, maybe one of your people felt the need to have it all to himself.”

  Bill Laughter chuckled and waved the fax. “A Navaho collector would laugh at this because it makes no sense. A rich Brazilliana, now, or an Asian, they’d put a light on it and stick it up on their wall and be happy with it. But not a Navaho collector.”

  “So he’d shy away from it because it isn’t traditional? How do you know it isn’t? Maybe your grandfather was wrong. Maybe the Way described in this painting is still known to someone.”

  “So what? It’s of no use to anybody.”

  “What if it’s an exact reproduction, laid down without any of the little changes necessary to render it harmless?” Ooljee should be asking these questions, he thought.

  “Hey, my grandfather wouldn’t have done that.” Up to now Laughter had been brash and confident. Suddenly he looked uncomfortable.

  “You just said you don’t believe in this stuff.”

  “1 know that.” Laughter leaned forward, lowering his voice. “Look, if you asked me straight out do I believe in any of the old ways, I’d say no. But it never hurts to play it safe. There’s a whole history of funny things that have happened on the Rez.

  “Maybe your guy is another artist. Maybe he’s working for someone else who wants something really unique. Except that it’s a lot simpler to create your own designs than to kill to acquire somebody else’s.

  “There’s also the possibility that this guy is a hatathli, or a would-be hatathli, or some nut who thinks he can be a hatathli and that he really can work miracles by muttering ancient baloney over a pile of colored sand and dirt.”

  “People who believe what they want to believe are capable of anything,” Moody informed him coldly. “I know that from experience.”

  “That’s what I’m saying. Me, I believe in positive cash flow. My dad, he maybe believes in this stuff a little. My grandfather believed a lot, and he wasn’t an isolated case in his day. If this guy you’re after thinks using this painting will make a real hatathli out of him…

  “Me, I wouldn’t kill for a sandpainting if it was made out of gemstones. We’ve actually done a couple like that. Ruby dust for red color, amethyst for purple, emerald for green and so on. Strictly for tourists, of course.

  “The whole point being that while this is real interesting”—and he tapped the fax—“I don’t see anything here worth killing for.”

  “How do you think I feel?” Moody finished his coffee. “Y’all have no way of telling if it’s a true medicine painting or if it’s been altered?”

  Laughter shook his head. “We don’t know the design, so how could we tell if it’s been changed or not? Like I said, it makes no difference anyway.”

  “People keep pointing that out to me a lot.”

  Laughter eyed him uncertainly, unable to tell if his visitor was making a joke or not. It made Moody feel good to be able to turn the tables a little.

  The younger man rose. “I’ve got to get back to work.” The detective watched him leave, then ambled over to rejoin his partner. The elder Laughter was speaking earnestly.

  “Have you considered the possibility that your murder might have nothing to do with the sandpainting?”

  Ooljee looked startled.

  Moody sympathized. “How do you mean?” he asked. “Whoever destroyed the painting might have been fulfilling a promise made many years, perhaps even generations, ago. Among the Navaho there are many old feuds,

  though few end in bloodshed. This might not have anything to do with your Mr. Kettrick. It might be between your murderer and whoever hired him and someone else entirely. An old argument, an ancient dispute. This Kettrick might simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “No,” said Ooljee with assurance. “The man who killed spoke too often of the painting. I still believe it is central to understanding our case. If only there was a way to interpret its meaning.”

  “I wish you luck.” Red Laughter rose. The visit was over.

  He tried to console his guests as he escorted them to the door. “I hope my son and I have been of some help.”

  “At least now we know where the painting came from.” Ooljee paused at the entrance. “We may need to access your records again.”

  Laughter fumbled in his pockets until he found a business card. “Call any time. I will open a modem for you.” He extended a hand. “It was nice to meet you, Mr. Moody. I hope you have not come so far for nothing.”

  “Thanks,” said Moody, adding with careful enunciation, “Doo ahashyaa da.”

  The painter’s eyebrows narrowed and he glanced sharply at Ooljee, who smiled back. “I see you have been getting some lessons in Navaho. I admire you for making the effort. It is not an easy language to learn.”

  “What now?” Moody asked his colleague as the truck bounced back along the dirt track that paralleled the main creek. Ancient cliffs towered above them, silent and unhelpful, the edges of the wound in the Earth that was Canyon de Chelley.

  “Now that we know where the painting came from originally, maybe we can trace the original owners. I’m going to do some more cross-checking. The hands it has passed through over the years may lead us to the hands that slew. Something might turn up.”

  “I hope so, ’cause I’m getting damn sick of talking about sand and painting and Ways when we’re supposed to be trying to catch a real person. You sure you got composites out all over this place?”

  For the first time since they’d met, Ooljee tensed. “Do not try to tell me my job, detective.”

  “Just thinkin’ out loud. Something else.”

  “What?”

  “I think you ought to run a background check on the Laughters. They were real friendly and real helpful, but I’m not sure I buy the old man’s story about not remembering that particular painting. He said himself how unique and different it was from anything else he’d ever seen. If that’s the case, why would he forget it? If this involves some old dispute, maybe it involves his family as well. That’d be a good reason for forgetting.”

  “But he found the painting for us in his files,” Ooljee pointed out.

  “That’s so.”

  “Still, you are right. It will not hurt to run a check. What are you going to do while I am mollydiving?”

  “Well, I’m sure as hell not gonna sit around and stare over your shoulder. Maybe I’ll take a stroll through town. I don’t want to impose on you and your missus’s privacy any more than I have to. And I’d like to see some more of the city.”

  “Suit yourself.” Ooljee shrugged. “I will drop you off centrally downtown. If you get lost…”

  “I remember your number. And the address. And I can always walk into the nearest station.”

  “That’s right.” The sergeant was relieved. Moody was his responsibility.

  “I’ve got a copy of the composite.” Moody tapped the spinner attached to his belt. “Maybe I’ll just flash a few street people, since I’m not familiar with your regular sources.”

  “A good idea, since my ‘regular sources’ do not seem to be helping us any.”

  Moody leaned back against the seat, relaxing against the high-acceleration padding. “Could be I’ll get lucky. It’s a dumb fisherman who sits in the same spot without cat
ching fish and never moves on.”

  “I wish you luck.” Ooljee negotiated a low river dune. “But it would be better if we knew what to use for bait.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Ooljee dropped him outside the downtown Intercontinental Hotel. Moody followed the police pickup until it was swallowed by the traffic. Then he turned a slow circle, alone for the first time in an alien environment.

  He felt more at home than he’d expected. The stream of well-dressed tourists and white-collar workers flowing past him was little different from what he would have encountered in a cosmopolitan eastern city, except for the invigorating racial diversity. He rubbed the back of his neck. It didn’t itch as bad as it had on the day of his arrival. Maybe he was getting acclimated a little.

  It was late and the holasers and neons and airborne electrophosphorescents were emerging from electronic hibernation, flaring to luminescent life in search of consumer prey. More of them would appear as twilight gave way to night, their messages insistent, visually and aurally demanding your attention.

  Hands jammed in the pockets of his jacket, he chose a direction at random and began to walk, trying to recall what he could of blocks and street names but more or less just letting his legs and his curiosity carry him along.

  Most of the shops were long and narrow, their limited frontage a sure indication of high rents. They sold jewelry, paintings, souvenirs classy and cheap, sculpture, electronic gadgets; designer clothing from China, Russia, Japan, Paris; high-quality furniture from Brazil and the South American Union; antiques, Oriental specialties, and fine pastries. Moody was especially careful to avoid the latter.

  Amerindian artifacts he could not judge, but he suspected what he was seeing on the street was not the most authentic available. Ganado was a commercial, not a cultural, center. Ethnologists would find better hunting in Kayenta or Window Rock.