Day of the Dead - J. A. Jance [57]
“She might not appreciate my interference,” Fat Crack said uneasily.
“I don’t expect you to do anything,” Julia said quickly. “But I thought if you could just see her, maybe you could tell me if she’s okay.”
And that’s when he understood the rest of it. The tribal council was sending the tribal chairman on a mission to Washington. Julia Joaquin was sending a medicine man.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do. How do I reach her?”
Julia reached in her pocket, pulled out a piece of paper, and handed it over. On it was a street address but no phone number.
That was why, a month later, late in the day, Fat Crack found himself standing on Kalorama Street in front of a three-story walk-up. The information operator had informed him that the telephone number for Philip Cachora was unlisted, leaving Fat Crack no choice but to show up unannounced on Delia and Philip’s doorstep.
Approaching the door of the building, Fat Crack rang the bell next to their name and waited for several minutes. Finally, when he was about to walk away, a disembodied male voice spoke through an intercom. “Yes?”
If this was Philip Cachora, his voice was strangely slurred. “Is Delia here?” Fat Crack asked.
“Who wants to know?”
“My name is Gabe Ortiz—a friend of hers from back home.”
“I don’t remember her mentioning you.”
“She might have known me as Fat Crack.”
“Fat Crack?” Philip repeated slowly. “The guy with the tow truck?”
“That’s right.”
“Just a minute. I’ll be right down.”
Less than a minute later, the front door opened. A slight young man—a blond teenager—burst out of the doorway and then hurried down the street at a half-trot, shoving in his shirttail as he went. A full minute later, another figure appeared at the door—this one recognizably Tohono O’odham.
Philip Cachora was a burly man in his midforties. He exhibited all the obvious traits of an urban Indian gone to seed. He stepped outside the front door and pulled it closed behind him. When he let go of the door, Philip stumbled and faltered. He had to place one hand on the building’s outside wall to steady himself. His breath reeked of beer. The distinctive odor of marijuana clung to his hair and clothing.
“Delia’s not home,” he muttered.
“When do you expect her?”
Reflexively, Philip glanced at his watch, then shrugged. “Don’ know,” he mumbled thickly. “After. She’s at a meeting somewhere.”
Philip Cachora had been away from the reservation for a long time, but time and distance had yet to strip him of his distinctively Tohono O’odham manner of speech. “Why’dya want her?”
There was more than a hint of belligerence in his voice. Fat Crack Ortiz had dealt with enough pissed-off drunks to read the signals and be wary. Philip was two decades younger and much heavier than him. That didn’t make Philip tougher than Fat Crack, but it did make him dangerous.
Without having to be told, Fat Crack knew much of what was going on. It made him sad. All those years ago, Ellie Chavez had taken her young children and fled her abusive husband. By doing so she must have hoped to save them all. Despite Ellie’s best efforts, her daughter had married a man much like her own father. No wonder her letters to Julia Joaquin had changed. She was probably too embarrassed to admit that she was repeating her mother’s mistakes.
“I was thinking about offering her a job,” Fat Crack replied.
In actual fact, he hadn’t been thinking about it until the words burst unbidden from his mouth. He had known for months that Elias Segundo, the current tribal attorney, was thinking about retiring due to ill health. It wouldn’t have been right to start a job search for his replacement before Elias was ready, but now…
Philip looked at Fat Crack speculatively. “What kind of job?”
Before Gabe Ortiz could answer, a shiny black Saab nosed its way up to the curb and stopped in a passenger-loading zone. Leaving the car with its flashers blinking,