The Milagro Beanfield War

by John Nichols

  A mosquito landed on one nipple; she brushed it off. Herbie slapped his cheek, squashed an insect that was punching a hole in his ear, then brushed three more off his arm. Languidly, he caressed her flesh zeppelins; a mosquito landed on his knuckle, he flicked it off with his other hand. His fingertips began to serenade a nipple; three mosquitoes alighted at once on her tantalizing tit; he gently shooed them off and pressed into that tumescent snow-white flesh; she murmured “Ouch,” and clouted a fat mosquito sucking on her other breast, in the process smearing blood across the unbelievably succulent jug, and then Herbie had to remove his clutching paw from her bosom in order to crucify a mosquito that had punctured his lip, which is when she said, “What the fuck is the matter with this place? It’s crawling with bugs!”

  Herbie had a sensation that for the rest of his life he was going to hate the Southwest more than he had ever hated any place before, or would ever be able to hate any place again.

  “I’ll turn the radio up loud,” she said, “maybe the noise will drive them away—”

  And with the radio blaring Herbie suddenly forsook his debonair approach, lunging at her and grabbing what he could get before the roof caved in, inhaling one breast so lustily that the nipple must have kissed the scar where once his tonsils had been. Starting to respond, she ran her strong fingers eagerly through his hair, then clobbered his head—“I got one of the little motherfuckers!”—so hard he released her breast with a loud sucking pop!, exclaiming “Ouch, for crissakes!” as his ears started to ring from her blow.

  With that, the Butterfly of Love exclaimed, “Oh Jesus, man, they’re piranha bugs! They’re cannibals!” Wrenching away from each other, they slapped cheeks, shoulders, heads—she hitched her blouse up and croaked, “Hey, man, let’s get out of here!”

  Desperately, frantically, while the Rolling Stones cackled sadistically at full volume on the radio, Herbie shifted into reverse, and, without looking backward, furiously popped the clutch, causing his wonderful convertible to bolt back onto the dirt road and directly into a rattletrap pickup barreling along at a high rate of speed. The collision spun Herbie’s car around so that the passenger side collided with the pickup’s rear end, knocking the convertible off the road sideways and propelling the Butterfly of Love out her door into a somersault on the road.

  Miraculously, nobody was hurt. Joe Mondragón, carrying a rifle in his left hand, leaped from the pickup and ran around it screaming obscenities in Spanish. When Herbie got a load of who he had backed into he clapped his hands over his eyes, waiting to be executed. When Joe realized who had clobbered his truck, he paused only long enough to unleash a string of gory expletives, then he turned tail, galloped up a slope into the woods, and disappeared.

  “Shut off that radio!” the Butterfly of Love hollered. Fumbling blindly, Herbie located the knob and gave it a vicious twist to the off position.

  The girl stood up, again fitted her chest back into her blouse, gestured obscenely at the car, and angrily retrieved her pack and guitar from the rear seat.

  “I’m sorry,” Herbie mumbled through his hands. “If you give me your pack, I’ll carry it back to town…”

  “Oh no you won’t,” she growled, sliding her arms through the straps and hunching the weight up into place. “You stay away from me, man. I think you got the worst karma of anybody I ever met.”

  And she took off down the road, leaving Herbie behind the wheel of his accordion, moaning into his hands.

  * * *

  As the ten o’clock nightly news was ending, Kyril Montana’s phone rang. Marilyn answered, spoke briefly with an undercover cohort of her husband’s, and called the agent into the den from the living room. “It’s Gil,” she whispered, shrugging a little and smiling quizzically as she handed over the phone and left the den, closing the door behind her.

  “Gil—?”

  “Yeah. Listen. You know that guy up in Milagro? The little schmuck with the beanfield? He shot somebody a couple hours ago. Fellow by the name of Pacheco, owns a pig got into his field. Shot him once in the chest with a .30–06. He’s not dead yet, but they say, depending of course on how the wind blows, that he could croak. They took him to the clinic at Doña Luz. Right now they should be transferring him to St. Claire’s down here. But nobody thinks he’ll make it.”

  Kyril Montana asked, “Where are they holding Mondragón?”

  “They’re not. He’s gone.”

  “Gone? Gone where? Who’s up there, anybody?”

  “Sure. Trucho—believe it or not—he’s even up there, with Granny Smith and the Doña Luz boys, Bill Koontz and Bruno Martínez. By the time anybody arrived, though, he’d flown the coop.”

  “Which way?”

  “Up,” Gil said.

  “North—? Did they set up blocks?”

  “East,” Gil said, chuckling.

  “East? There’s not a thing to the east except mountains.”

  “Yessir,” Gil laughed. “That’s all she wrote.”

  “Up into the mountains?” Kyril Montana frowned. “Who knows for sure that’s where he went?”

  “They asked around. Everybody pointed to the mountains. So they drove in every available access road for miles and found his pickup at the end of one. He ran it into the back of a 1956 Chevy convertible belonging to—catch this, are you ready? Belonging to a VISTA volunteer named Harry Goldstein, who had a girl in the car with him called—guess what?”

  “I can’t guess, Gil. Come on, quit horsing around.”

  “The Butterfly of Love. No shit, I swear to God. The Butterfly of Love. Five thousand miles from nowhere Joe Mondragón runs his pickup into a 1956 Chevy convertible carrying a VISTA volunteer named Harry Goldstein and a hippie chick who calls herself the Butterfly of Love.”

  “And he’s gone.”

  “But not forgotten. The volunteer, Goldstein, he said Mondragón had a gun, screamed something in Spanish, and ran up a hill into the trees.”

  “Listen, Gil, this isn’t funny.”

  “Oh, come off it, man. How long is he gonna last in the mountains? He’ll freeze his ass off tonight. When they arrest him tomorrow they’ll have to thaw him out with a blowtorch in order to get a statement.”

  The agent took out his pad and started to write on it.

  “What time did he shoot Pacheco?”

  “Well, probably around six-thirty, while it was still light out, so far as they can tell.”

  “Where did he shoot him?”

  “Out at the field. The new one. The illegal one, the symbolic one. He was half-down in the ditch, Pacheco was, soaking wet, almost drowned, when they found him.”

  “Out at the field? What the hell do you mean, Gil, ‘out at the field’?”

  “Apparently this guy Pacheco, him and his pig, they’re a legend in that town. Pacheco’s pig, everybody knows the story. The pig’s always breaking loose, and this Pacheco, that’s all he ever does up there, he drags his ass around from field to field, neighbor to neighbor, looking for his pig. He receives about two hundred death threats—or at least his pig does—per annum, according to the locals. Pacheco, he just couldn’t build a fence strong enough to hold that pig. Neighbors, they’ve shot that pig four or five times, apparently, but mostly with .22s, never did it much damage.”

  “Anybody witness the shooting?”

  “Sure. Two men. Guy named Mondragón, no relation, and another old coot named Mondragón, no relation either. What happened, is, Mondragón—our pal, Joe Mondragón—he showed up at the field, found the pig in it, went to his pickup and got the gun from the rack, walked back to his field feeding shells into the gun, and then shot the pig six times from about ten yards. That was around five-thirty.”

  “And then—?”

  “Nobody knows how Pacheco found out about it. But they got some grapevine up there, I’m telling you, That Pacheco, he’s lived alone six, seven years, ever since his wife died. I guess he really loved that pig. Maybe he was duking it for all I know.”

  “Wh
at happened when he heard about what Joe did to the pig, Gil?”

  “He went hunting for Mondragón with a .22.”

  “Pistol or rifle?”

  “Pistol. A fifteen-dollar cheapshit revolver.”

  “And—”

  “And when he found Mondragón irrigating that beanfield with the dead sow off in a corner he stopped and ripped off a chamber load at our hero from a distance of about thirty yards.”

  “Shit,” Kyril Montana murmured under his breath. “Did he hit him?”

  “You kidding? That’s another thing Pacheco does, apparently—he drinks. He’s a bottle-a-day man, sometimes more. He really stokes it away. He’s got some money, seems his wife was loaded; she wasn’t a local filly, and she had education too. She bequeathed him a small bundle of eastern paper, and he hasn’t worked a lick since.”

  “So he missed six times.”

  “You betcha. And I guess around the fourth miss Mondragón picked up his rifle, sighted carefully, and pulled the trigger.”

  “Gil, how come he ran?”

  “I dunno. Least nobody can piece that one together. Except maybe he figured nobody saw it, and he knew no cop or judge was going to believe his story. Maybe he had a feeling it was some kind of setup…”

  “Listen, Gil, this isn’t a good situation. Who’s on those witnesses? Is there anybody with those witnesses?”

  “I imagine Trucho has explained a few things to them. So far I’m not even sure if the press is up there. But, if possible, of course, we’ll try to get it handled like just another bar-type killing.”

  “Give me the names, the first names, addresses if you have them, of the two witnesses,” the agent said.

  Gil gave the names; he didn’t have addresses.

  “Where’s Dave Edsell?” Kyril Montana asked. “He up there?”

  “Last I heard, probably not. As I understand it, though, he’s already spoken with Halversson over at the Reporter. So if Halversson wants to play it, that bastard should know how to play it, at least until we know more about how things stack up. Trucho wants your butt in Milagro, though. He doesn’t know from shit about those mountains.”

  “Too many people up there could blow it, Gil. In fact it was probably stupid to send anyone up there at all. Maybe we should keep out and let the locals handle it…”

  Gil laughed. “Unmarked cars all the way, man. Everybody’s lying low down at headquarters in Doña Luz.”

  “If Halversson’s interested and he sends Johnnie Dicus up there, that’s the first goddam place Johnnie will stop. He’s got a nose for this sort of thing, he’s no greenhorn.”

  “Johnnie likes his job,” Gil said. “What do you think he is, some kind of radical rinky-dink reporter? He’s drawing a decent weekly salary from Halversson; he’s got a wife, a brat, a mortgage, and a ’71 Oldsmobile on time.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Kyril Montana asked.

  “They’re gonna go in after him in the morning, I reckon.”

  “Who?”

  “I dunno. Ask the boss. Maybe a couple local boys. And you.”

  “Damn. This isn’t right at all.”

  “Maybe it will work for us, man. Every cloud has a sil—”

  “Too much publicity,” Kyril Montana interrupted. “If this thing gets away from us it’s as full of explosives as an atom bomb. What are they planning to do, go over the mountains with choppers?”

  “They got the little bubble copter up in Doña Luz already.”

  “God damn— Okay, Gil. Call Trucho. Tell him I’m getting ready right now to drive up there. I think maybe you better keep the line open to Halversson, but don’t get too pushy. He knows where it’s at, but sometimes he gets a little jerky and unpredictable. I don’t see where he’d care to run much more than a couple of blotter-type inches, unless he gets wind something funny’s in the air. I don’t think he’s capable of an act of courage, but his ego could do us a little harm if it got bruised.”

  “No problem,” Gil laughed sarcastically. “I anticipate no problems from that quarter.”

  “Well, don’t underanticipate,” the agent warned. “This might be sticky, Gil, and it could use a little finesse.”

  “Call me Mr. Finesse,” Gil chuckled.

  “Fuck you,” Kyril Montana swore petulantly. “And by the way, why wasn’t I informed of this sooner?”

  “At first Trucho didn’t exactly think you’d be Mr. Right for this particular moment in that particular town, all things considered.”

  “But now he’s scared.”

  “Let’s just say he’s quietly shitting in his pants,” Gil corrected. “You and him better talk it over. He’s got the background on the shooting; now he wants your background material, you know, on Mondragón and the others. And just exactly what you did up there, anything that never turned up in the official paper work. Maybe you better stop by for the file—”

  “I know the file,” the agent said tightly. “Or maybe you’d like me to drop it on Halversson’s desk on my way out—?”

  “Halversson, shmalversson. What about that other guy, the lawyer works for the Voice?”

  “The Voice folded. Has anybody run into him up there?”

  “Not so far as I know.”

  “Maybe somebody better talk with him. Or at least put a man on him,” Kyril Montana said, more to himself than to Gil. But how could you talk to Bloom without arousing his suspicion and drawing a surefire story that might appear somewhere sometime?

  “Okay, Gil. Yeah, you better tell Trucho to put a guy on Bloom, or at least keep half an eye on his place. Thanks for calling.”

  “Sure, pal. See you up there, maybe.…”

  Immediately on hanging up, Kyril Montana began to move. He fetched a rifle from a polished walnut gun case that he had made when still in high school, and from a locked drawer at the bottom of this case he removed the bolt for the rifle, which he fitted into the gun. He also retrieved from the drawer a black plastic case containing the rifle’s scope, a box of high-powered shells, and a .357-magnum pistol in a hip holster. He set this equipment on his desk and lifted his binoculars from off a peg beside the gun case. Then he went through the kitchen to a utility room, located a padded canvas gun-carrying case in a jumbled corner, and, back in the den again, he fitted the rifle, the scope box, the magnum, and the shells in the bag and zipped it up. After that he carried the equipment back through the kitchen and utility room, placed everything in the trunk of his car, locked the trunk, and started the car, letting it idle as he returned inside.

  Marilyn was watching TV. Briefly, he outlined what had happened; she accepted the news quietly. While he was upstairs changing into a flannel shirt, khakis, tennis socks, and tan leather hiking boots, she fixed black coffee in a thermos and some chicken salad sandwiches. With the sandwiches in a sack and the thermos under his arm, and having kissed her good-bye with a promise to call once he had gotten up there, the agent snagged a goosedown ski parka off a hook in the utility room, and he was seated behind the wheel ready to back clear of the garage when suddenly he remembered he had forgotten the pack.

  It was a lightweight nylon-frame job, and all the necessities, from toilet paper to a flashlight and matches, extra socks, a plastic see-through poncho, and a lightweight sleeping bag were already in it. There was a pocket for fishline and flies; another pocket jammed tight with first aid equipment, a snakebite kit, a small whetstone, and other necessities of outdoor life. The agent added some dehydrated foodstuff packets, an aluminum mess kit, kissed Marilyn again, and left.

  On the empty highway going north, he reviewed all the available information in the case and all the moves he had made, analyzing what had been done, where the weak links were, where the possible conduits of exposure were located, what the implications and possible consequences of Joe Mondragón’s actions were, not only for Joe, but for himself, Kyril Montana, and for the state police. He went over in his mind the people who were familiar with all or even bits and pieces of his own and his office’s
actions up to this point, and composed a mental list of those few men who might possibly cause trouble. There was nobody in the capital, but in Milagro, although he felt certain of Lavadie, Bud Gleason, and Nick Rael, he wondered about the sheriff, Bernabé Montoya. And that stupid mayor, Sammy Cantú, could blunder into trouble. He probably ought to speak with Cantú, then, going over the facts so that the mayor would understand this incident was spontaneous, not planned—Pacheco had acted on his own. And, because the shooting was unpremeditated, they were all off the hook, so long as they kept their mouths shut.

  Gliding down a hill into the small settlement of Arroyo Verde, Kyril Montana made a note to arrange a meeting with the governor and Bookman and Noyes, in order to explain what had happened. For as quickly as possible, now that they apparently had the goods on Joe Mondragón, whatever undercover provocateur groundwork had been laid and developed regarding him and his beanfield had to be erased; any and all confusion among those who had some knowledge about what had been afoot had to be dispelled.

  At a Lota Burger stand the agent ordered coffee to go. On the road again, beyond the town’s last streetlight, he sipped the coffee and quit thinking about the various ramifications for a while. The radio crackled intermittently, he paid no attention; if his personal call number, or a ten-code related to the shooting, came up, he would automatically tune in. In the meantime he guided his powerful car along the highway, driving fast, over seventy, up toward Milagro.

  For thirty miles there were no towns. The moon was partially hidden behind ragged summer thunderheads, but the agent could still see the surrounding landscape. On one side flat sagebrush plains trailed off into soft round foothills that led into mountains beyond. To the west, passing a lumber mill teepee burner whose tip glowed red, was an orchard valley along the Rio Grande. At one brief point where the road was slick from a local cloudburst he could smell a combination of fruit trees and heavy sage. Then the road suddenly started winding as it entered the river gorge.

  Kyril Montana slowed down to fifty-five. For a half-hour, in the gorge darkness, no other cars came at him. When the moon emerged from behind thunderhead darkness the river gleamed. No guard railings lined the road, and in spots where rain had fallen the road was slippery and treacherous; small rocks that had oozed loose from the cliffsides and scattered across the road forced him to brake down even further. Toward the end he climbed sharply for about ten minutes, past a deserted motel and a few ghostly cottonwood groves where dwellings lay, rising finally to the 7000-foot-high plateau he would follow all the way to Milagro.