Page 50 of A Long Con

He laughed outright this time. “You’re kidding, right?”

“I’m from New York. People help people.”

“Well, not on the rez.”

“You could pretend to be Navajo. You could pass. You can ask Ogden or Anson for tips.” Those were two half-Diné members of the Bent Zealots.

Royal made a lip fart. “Twinkletoes said he’d send me a screen shot of where Hogshead winds up. No address, but it’ll show an approximate location. There aren’t too many streets in Many Farms.”

“But we don’t know what his vehicle is.”

Royal had no response to this. He just made a face of disapproval and mounted his ride. I had no choice but to do the same.

We entered the rez. Almost instantly we found ourselves riding down a bumpy road framed by random litter. I realized Royal was right—I’d never spent any time on a rez. The tribal housing was box-like and depressing and each house looked the same, so even if Twinkletoes gave us a street view of the place, how could we tell it apart from the others?

Canyon de Chelly! I’d heard of that stunning, multi-colored place my entire life. Waving an arm that I hoped Royal could see in his rearview, on a whim I took the canyon exit. I had to pee, that was the excuse, but I really didn’t have to ride a mile to do that. We rode past a faded sign advertising NAVAO ASS ART, and we were apparently on Indian Route 1.

I pulled over past a diner and peed.

“Why’d we come out here?” asked Royal.

“I thought maybe we could see the canyon, but I guess not.”

“Yeah, let’s get back to the main drag.”

“Royal. How the fuck are we going to figure out which house he’s in?”

Royal shrugged. “The only car in town that isn’t an old Chevy pickup.”

From what little I’d seen, that was probably true. No one had a garage, so it’d be obvious. “Okay.” But just as I started to mount my faithful Road King, faraway wailing came closer like a train. Royal and I turned toward the sound, ears perked up. Turned out to be a guy, a young Diné dressed all in black including head scarf zipping out of the underbrush. Sounded like he was shrieking,

“Ch’iidii!”

Whatever that meant. He streaked past us just twenty yards away, the Doppler effect of a train leaving the station fading in the distance, followed by another few Diné and one white man. I noted Royal pulled his piece from his waistband and held it down by his thigh. They gave up running when they saw us. Maybe we were more interesting, and I was glad Royal was armed. When they got an eyeful of us they took a few steps toward us, and Royal held his empty hand out in warning.

Stay back. “We don’t want no trouble,” he said.

The two tallest guys, one in a Metallica T-shirt, looked at each other and laughed. “Oh, no, don’t get us wrong, man,” said the white guy. Only then did I notice they all wore fluorescent yellow windbreakers, air masks hanging around their necks, and I squinted to see the logo on their lapels. “No harm, no foul. We’re just members of a search and rescue party, and that guy suddenly didn’t want anything to do with it.”

“Encontramos un cadaver,” explained yet another guy who I took to be Mexican. Quite the diverse group.

Royal gave me some side-eye. “You found a dead body?”

“That’s what we do,” said the white guy, taking off a glove and extending a hand to Royal. It was kind of awkward, because Royal had to re-holster his piece in his pants to shake the guy’s hand. “I’m Tyler, this here’s Levi Chasinghawk. We run the Esperanza Para los Muertos group.”

“Berkeley,” I said, shaking the hands. “So you look for people lost in the desert?”

“Not just anyone,” said Levi, the Navajo heavy metal fan, “although we’ve sometimes found runaways, Diné kids who didn’t want to go home. The people we usually find are dead when we get to them.”

“The kids?” I asked.

“No,” said Tyler. With great import, he added, “The Mexican immigrants.”

“What?” asked Royal. “What’re they doing way up here?”

“Getting lost in the desert,” said the Mexican guy, Carlos. He was a squat, older gent, giving the impression he knew this place like the back of his hand. “Usually dead of dehydration.”

Levi said, “Last week, we found six sets of remains in one day. During July it can be twice that. It’s a hundred degrees then.”