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Overview
The body of a well-dressed fellow, all identification missing, is found hidden under the brush on the Jicarilla Apache Reservation. The local FBI takes over from the Navajo Police Sergeant Jim Chee, and quickly has the case snatched all the way to Washington. Washington proves uncooperative and the case is deadended. When Joe Leaphorn, the “legendary lieutenant” of Hillerman’s Navajo Tribal Police discovers that Washington officials hid the body’s identity, lines surprisingly connect to the case he’s working on at exotic game ranch. A photograph she sends him tells Chee she is facing a danger he doesn’t understand.
Hillerman produces a galaxy of unusual characters in this compelling novel that is sure to confound readers until the very last page.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780062018045 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 10/25/2011 |
| Series: | Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee Series , #16 |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Sales rank: | 1,106,786 |
| Product dimensions: | 4.70(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Hometown:
Albuquerque, New MexicoDate of Birth:
May 27, 1925Date of Death:
October 26, 2008Place of Birth:
Sacred Heart, OklahomaPlace of Death:
Albuquerque, New MexicoEducation:
B.A., University of Oklahoma, 1946; M.A., University of New Mexico, 1966Website:
http://tonyhillermanbooks.comRead an Excerpt
The Sinister Pig
By Hillerman, Tony
HarperTorch
ISBN: 0061098787Chapter One
David Slate reached across the tiny table in Bistro Bis and handed an envelope to the graying man with the stiff burr haircut.
"You are now Carl Mankin," Slate said. "You are newly retired from the Central Intelligence Agency. You are currently employed as a consultant for Seamless Weld. Along with your new credit card, Carl, that envelope holds a lot of authentic-looking stuff from Seamless. Business cards, expense account forms -- that sort of material. But the credit card should cover any expenses."
"Carl Mankin," the burr-haired man said, inspecting the card. "And a Visa card. 'Carl Mankin' should be easy to remember. And by next Tuesday, I actually will be newly retired from the CIA." He was older than middle age, well past sixty, but trim, sunburned, and young looking. He sorted through the papers from the envelope and smiled at Slate. "However, I don't seem to find a contract in here," he said.
Slate laughed. "And I'll bet you didn't expect to find one, either. The senator works on the old-fashioned 'gentlemen's agreement' contract. You know, 'Your word's as good as your bond.' That sounds odd here in Washington these days, but some of the old-timers still like to pretend there is honor alive among the political thieves."
"Remind me of what that word is, then," the new Carl Mankin said. "As I remember it, you buy my time for thirty days, or until the job is done. Or failing that, I tell you it can't be done. And the pay is fifty thousand dollars, either way it works out."
"And expenses," Slate said. "But the credit card should cover that unless you're paying somebody to tell you something." He chuckled. "Somebody who doesn't accept a Visa card."
Carl Mankin put everything back into the envelope, and the envelope on the table beside his salad plate. "Who actually pays the credit card bill? I noticed my Carl Mankin address is in El Paso, Texas."
"That's the office of Seamless Weld," Slate said. "The outfit you're working for."
"The senator owns it? That doesn't sound likely."
"It isn't likely. It's one of the many subsidiaries of Searigs Corporation, and that, so I understand, is partly owned and totally controlled by A.G.H. Industries."
"Searigs? That's the outfit that built the offshore-drilling platforms for Nigeria," said Carl Mankin. "Right?"
"And in the North Sea," Slate said. "For the Norwegians. Or was it the Swedish?"
"Owned by the senator?"
"Of course not. Searigs is part of A.G.H. Industries. What are you getting at, anyway?"
"I am trying to get at who I am actually working for." Slate sipped his orange juice, grinned at Carl Mankin, said: "You surely don't think anyone would have told me that, do you?"
"I think you could guess. You're the senator's chief administrative aide, his picker of witnesses for the committees he runs, his doer of undignified deeds, his maker of deals with the various lobbyists -- " Mankin laughed. "And need I say it, his finder of other guys like me to run the senator's errands with somebody else paying the fee. So I surely do think you could make an accurate guess. But would you tell me if you did?"
Slate smiled. "Probably not. And I am almost certain you wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"In which case, I should probably make sure to get my pay in advance."
Slate nodded. "Exactly. When we finish lunch, and you pay for it with your new Visa card, we'll go down to the bank I use. We transfer forty-nine thousand five hundred dollars into Carl Mankin's account there, and I present you the deposit slip."
"And the other five hundred?"
Slate got out his wallet, extracted a deposit slip, and handed it to Carl Mankin. It showed a Carl Mankin account opened the previous day with a five-hundred-dollar deposit. Mankin put it in his shirt pocket, then took it out and laid it on the table.
"An account opened for an imaginary man without his signature. I didn't know that could be done."
Slate laughed. "It's easy if the proper vice president calls down from upstairs and says do it."
"We need to be clear about this," Mankin said. "You want me to go out to that big Four Corners oil patch in New Mexico, look it over, see if I can find out how the pipeline system out there was used -- and maybe still is being used -- to bypass paying royalty money into the Interior Department's trust fund for the Indians. Does that about summarize the job?"
Slate nodded.
"That's a big part of it. The most important information of all is the names of those switching the stuff around so the money for it goes into the right pockets. And who owns the pockets."
"And the senator understands that this is likely to produce nothing. I presume it is one of a whole bunch of ways he's looking for some way to pin the blame, or the corruption, on somebody for that four- or five-billion-dollar loss of royalty money from the Tribal Trust Funds. The one the Washington Post has been writing about for the past month. The one the Secretary of Interior and the Bureau of Indian Affairs honchos are in trouble over."
Slate was grinning again. "Was that intended as a question? What do the press secretaries say to questions like that?" He slipped into a serious, disapproving expression. "We never comment on speculation."
"The newspapers say that this ripping off the four billion or so of Tribal royalty money has been going on for more than fifty years. And they're quoting the government bean counters. Right? I can't see much hope of me finding anything new..."
Continues...
Excerpted from The Sinister Pig by Hillerman, Tony Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Interviews
Legends of the Southwest: Hillerman, Leaphorn, and Chee
Legendary investigator Joe Leaphorn returns from retirement to join forces with tenacious tribal cop Jim Chee and newbie Border Patrol officer Bernie Manuelito in Tony Hillerman's intricately plotted Sinister Pig. Upon the publication of the book, Ransom Notes asked its prolific author to share some thoughts on his compelling southwestern series and explain how each of the investigators fits into the Navajo culture they share.
Tony Hillerman: Leaphorn was originally modeled a bit on a young Hutchinson County, Texas, sheriff I knew when I was a police reporter for a paper in the Texas Panhandle -- a wise and humane cop to whom I added some Navajo cultural characteristics.
Chee I modeled after younger Navajo types who (unlike Leaphorn's generation) had not been put into government boarding schools and thus were not deprived of the cultural teaching Navajo children traditionally receive. He has always been more dedicated to the Navajo Way…and less willing than Leaphorn to give whiteman laws precedence.
Bernie Manuelito is my way of sharing with readers my high regard for the respect the Navajo culture has always given women. She's meant to represent a fairly typical woman of the Dinee (the Navajo people) today.
Ransom Notes: Do you think your work has made any changes in the mystery field over the years?
TH: I think the mystery field has tended to wisely follow American readers' tastes, and sometimes perhaps lead them. I like to believe that my own Leaphorn/Chee books have had some effect on broadening American understanding that tribal cultures are much more sophisticated than many readers had known. In my opinion, we could improve our majority culture by learning from the Navajo sense of humor, and their attitudes about family values, good manners, and the evils of greed.
RN: What made you decide to emphasize the role federal corruption plays in crimes ranging from the illegal drug trade to the missing/stolen royalties due on natural resources taken from tribal land?
TH: I try to give my readers realistic, believable plots. I think most of those who read my books are well-informed and wise folks who would be aware that corruption as well as incompetence must be involved in the billions missing from tribal trust funds. I grew up in a "prohibition" state, where everyone down to grade-schoolers knew who and where the whiskey bootleggers were, knew the police must know, and understood why the new sheriff could immediately buy a new Caddy. The "war on drugs" is much more corrupt than the failed war on whiskey. Why not use it?
Some of the basic ideas behind The Sinister Pig were suggested to me by two women who have worked with the Border Patrol, Customs Service, and Treasury Department. They gave me the idea of enlisting Bernie in the Border Patrol and then pointed to the problem posed by abandoned pipelines. It also helped that my brother Barney was a petroleum geologist and we grew up on the edge of the Seminole "oil patch" in Oklahoma.
In addition, as a political reporter I became interested in the reluctance of bureaucrats to look on information as valuable currency, to be used to trade for favors and political benefit. I think this one of the sociological facts that makes it difficult for law enforcement to be efficient in small-town America, when decisions and data must be filtered through layer after layer of patronage politicians, many of whom have not a clue about how policemen work.
