Sacred Clowns by Tony Hillerman

He’ll be trying to get the Horse Mesa Chapter to pass a resolution backing the dump. The Tribal Council usually goes along with whatever the local chapters want in their own district. And if the people out at Horse Mesa know he’s being paid to sell them on the dump—well, it makes them suspicious.”
    “I don’t have anything on paper,” Applebee said. He gestured disappointment with his hands. “Nothing you’d call concrete evidence.”
    “Nothing he can’t deny?” Janet asked. “What’s your source of information?”
    Applebee examined his teacup and ignored both questions. “I think I can get something,” he said. He sipped, thoughtful.
    “Something?” Janet asked.
    Applebee smiled. “Something useful,” he said. “I think I know how I can get something he can’t deny.”

THE WAITER in the Dowager Empress had long since abandoned hope of freeing his best table for another set of diners. He was outside the kitchen door, leaning on the wall, sneaking a smoke and enjoying Flagstaff’ s cold autumn air and the dazzle of stars overhead. At the table inside, Joe Leaphorn and Professor Louisa Bourebonette sat side by side. The assorted dishes of Chinese food on which they had dined were gone, replaced by a clutter of maps.
    “How about this,” Bourebonette was saying. “We take the American flight to Hong Kong, transfer to Air China to Beijing. I want to do some work in the library there. About two days, maybe. Or three. You could either do the tourist thing, sort of get used to China and Chinese food and their way of doing things, or you could take a flight north from Beijing and see what you could find out about contacts in Mongolia. And I could join you because I have some stuff I want to get copies of there. Now these Chinese airline schedules are from when I was there three years ago, but it looks like . . .”
    Leaphorn found himself only half-listening to Bourebonette’s recitation of flight schedules to places that sounded totally unreal. He was looking at the top of her head, bent over the schedules. He was thinking that the hair was gray but looked alive. Clean and healthy. (Emma’s hair to the very end had remained a glossy black.) He was thinking, Louisa needs to get her bifocal prescription changed. She is bending too low over the maps. Emma always balked at getting her eyes examined. He was thinking of how being alone in China’s interior held no terrors for him. It would be strange. Speaking not a word of Chinese would be a problem. But it would be exciting. Louisa had said arranging an interpreter would be no problem. Easy but expensive. So what? What else did he have to spend his savings on?
    Professor Bourebonette looked up at him and smiled. “That sound all right? We can always change it.”
    “Sounds fine,” Leaphorn said, thinking, Dilly Streib was right. She is a lovely lady.
    Thinking of what Dilly had implied about sex with her. Thinking of all the things she was doing for him—taking him along as dead weight on this trip. What did he owe her for that? What would she expect?
    The waiter appeared at Leaphorn’s shoulder, smelling of cigarette smoke. “Anything else I can get you? Refill on the coffee?”
    “Not for me,” Leaphorn said. “Louisa?”
    Professor Bourebonette gathered up her maps. “I think we’d better go,” she said. “If you’re driving back tonight. Do you have to?”
    “I have a lot of work to do,” Leaphorn said. Actually, he didn’t intend to go home. He’d spent four hours on the highway this afternoon. That was enough. He was tired. There was a Motel 6 on the way out that always had a vacancy once the tourist rush was over.
    “I have a guest room,” Bourebonette said. She laughed. “Or something I call a guest room. Anyway, you’re welcome to use it. You’re tired. That’s almost two hundred miles from here to Window Rock.”
    “Two hundred and eighteen,” Leaphorn said.
    She was studying his expression. Her own was whimsical.