by Gwen Moffat
Back in Endeavor Miss Pink followed a grizzled man in jeans and a ball cap to a battered Cessna. He helped her aboard and they took off to trundle over the desert at a speed that had her reflecting that at this rate it would take her most of the day to cross four states. But in the event it was the familiar problem of a few miles at either end of a journey, whether you did it by road or in an air taxi. On the long hop she flew so high that all colour was lost in space and the deserts were merely a pale floor smudged intermittently by crops in the irrigated areas. Rivers, the Colorado and the Rio Grande, didn’t show at all where they weren’t lined with trees.
Her jet landed at El Paso and she took another little aeroplane and chugged on across Texas to come down in a bumpy field among strange and spiky yucca. Beyond a fence were humped bulls in shades of roan, pink and blue. There was no sign of a town. A man in a shack telephoned for a car which arrived half an hour later: a dusty old Cadillac. The driver was a Mexican boy whose English was so poor that beyond giving him her destination she made no attempt to converse.
The town of Seeping Springs was hidden in a dip in the ground. As they approached she saw one wide street running to a single set of traffic lights then rising, narrowing to an arrow’s point that was lost in the distant hills. She felt a twinge of compassion for this tiny outpost of civilisation. What did people do here?
There was a library, a courthouse with white palings, a post office. There was the usual sprawl of fast food joints, gas stations, stores, a laundromat, while side-streets gave glimpses of adobe houses under shade trees. The driver stopped. ‘Thunderbird,’ he said.
The motel could have done with a coat of paint. On a motheaten patch of astro-turf a large metal and plastic bird was outlined in broken neon. There was an open courtyard: the familiar caravanserai with cell-like rooms on three sides, and in the centre a small pool where three heads, seemingly disembodied under hats, were motionless on the surface of the water. Three pairs of eyes in leathery faces observed Miss Pink dismiss her taxi and enter the office.
The receptionist was fat, middle-aged and vivacious, with a ruffle perm designed for a teenager. Miss Pink registered, using the office pen that was stamped ‘Thunderbird Motel, 190 Main Street, Seeping Springs, Texas’. She gave the address of her New York agent and when the woman remarked on this in conjunction with an English accent, explained that she was a writer.
‘You got company. Mrs Harshberg’s a writer. Her in the pool.’ Miss Pink smiled and made her way to her room, wishing the bathers good afternoon as she passed. Smiles flickered under hat brims; someone called out that she should join them.
She showered and emerged from her room wearing a black regulation swimsuit. As she lowered herself into the water, her face lit up with pleasure. Seeping Springs was hot but the pool was only warm. She gave them her name, said she came from London and left the rest to them. The inquisition commenced.
No, she was not on holiday, she told them; she was by way of being a writer. The questioning was checked there while Dulcie and Jan informed her that Mrs Harshberg – Ingrid – was a published author, and Ingrid explained that she was a historian and had written the history of her home-town: Bluewater, Minnesota. She was now engaged on a history of her late husband’s family. Miss Pink listened, fascinated, and confessed that she hadn’t the mental capacity for research; she wrote light romances. Everyone assured her that they read little else and, after a small pause, Dulcie asked politely where she set her stories.
‘That’s why I’m here!’ Miss Pink beamed. ‘A new departure: America. It was my agent’s suggestion, but I’m loving every minute. In fact, I can’t decide where to locate the next book; it’s all so exciting, isn’t it?’ They nodded acquiescence, waiting to see what made America exciting. ‘One feels born again,’ Miss Pink enthused, ‘as an author, I mean.’ Her voice dropped. ‘I’ve even had the thought, the urge to turn to crime.’
Water swirled. There were shaky smiles. Miss Pink added quickly: ‘Like Agatha Christie?’
‘Oh, Agatha Christie!’ Relief: she wasn’t mad, they’d misunderstood.
‘I always thought I should try my hand at a mystery,’ Ingrid said.
Miss Pink turned to her, a kindred spirit. ‘There’s so much material!’ She shuddered. ‘Too much. The rising crime rate –’
They burst into speech. ‘Mugging seniors!’
‘Your home isn’t safe, leave it for a few hours –’
‘– rape –’
‘I’m terrified every time someone overtakes me on the interstate. I never look ’case I’m looking down the barrel of a gun. I expect it all the time.’
‘Not in Texas,’ Miss Pink said indulgently. They stared. ‘Is it as bad here as elsewhere?’ The innocent question of the English tourist. ‘You’re not suggesting it would be unsafe to walk through Seeping Springs after dark?’
‘Oh, no!’
‘That’s why we winter here –’
‘This is Slumberville –’
‘Well –’ Ingrid had a treacly voice, portentous. It stopped them in their tracks. ‘We’re not far from the border,’ she said meaningly.
Miss Pink became chatty. ‘I was quite sure my driver was under age to be driving a taxi, and he was very dark and his English was poor. I put him down as a Mexican.’
‘Wetback,’ Ingrid said. ‘Illegal alien. It’d be a relative’s cab and they’d risk letting him go out to the airport just, probably knew the police were someplace else. They all listen to the police waveband. It was safe for the kid to pick you up.’
‘Well, no harm done.’ Miss Pink was cheerful. ‘Nothing sinister about the boy. I’d have no qualms about riding with him, even at night.’ This was met by silence, the words hanging in the air.
‘I wouldn’t do that,’ Jan said at length, and looked at her companions. Dulcie pursed her lips, Ingrid gave a reptilean grin. ‘No one goes anywhere at night this close to the border,’ she said. ‘Even driving your own vehicle. It’s like a voluntary curfew.’
‘No one except the Rangers,’ Dulcie amended.
‘And the DEA,’ put in Jan. ‘Not forgetting the Border Patrol.’
‘And the rest,’ Ingrid said darkly.
‘I’m not with you.’ Miss Pink looked from one to the other.
‘Texas Rangers,’ Ingrid explained. ‘They’re the ones concerned with serious crime hereabouts. And officers of the Drug Enforcement Administration.’
‘Ah, drugs. Of course. We’re that near the border. You mean people bring them across in vehicles at night? I thought boats and planes were used for that kind of traffic.’
‘They use every way they can,’ Ingrid said. ‘There was a good thing going across the Rio Grande, people bringing it over on mules. There’s no proper border along the river, you know, and on the other side it’s third-world stuff You wouldn’t believe it ’less you’ve been there. The river’s the actual border but it’s so shallow you can wade it at the fords. You could drive a truck across: four-wheel drive, but they don’t do that because then you got to cross the mountains and deserts. They use mules. Come over at night, lay up in the hills, go on next day to rendezvous with trucks: old pick-ups, campers, cars, you name it.’
‘It sounds almost too easy. Why aren’t they caught?’
‘They are, occasionally, but it’s only the couriers get caught, the little men, bottom of the heap. The men at the top are never at risk; they just start up again someplace else. Losing the occasional courier goes with the territory. Like you said, there are boats and planes, and it’s one hell of a long border. California and Arizona they got wire but there are gaps in the wire all the way across Arizona – and hell! what are wire-cutters for? But here there’s not even wire. The drugs barons have the border parcelled up, like you rent a stretch on a trout stream.’
‘Fascinating,’ breathed Miss Pink. ‘When the couriers are caught, do they talk?’
‘Not often. Their families are looked after while they’re inside and they’re well-pa
id anyways. They save their money. The big men don’t employ guys who drink, splash money around. It pays a courier to stay loyal.’
‘So how do they get caught?’
‘Why, on the road: spot checks. There are patrols all through the night. Stop a car, search it: kilos of cocaine in the trunk.’
‘Cocaine?’
‘Well, heroin, marijuana, you name it. Drugs are part of life down here.’ And with that Ingrid reverted to her historical works. After a discreet interval Miss Pink steered the conversation back to herself: ‘I’ve been given the name of an author in this region who writes light fiction: Emily Smallwood. Does the name mean anything to you?’ They shook their heads, baffled. ‘Married to a man who writes Westerns: Brett Vogel?’
They were annoyed that there should be local celebrities of whom they hadn’t heard. They had been wintering here for years; three widows, they had a possessive feeling for Seeping Springs but the name Brett Vogel meant nothing to them, nor that of Joanne Emmett which Miss Pink dropped delicately as another person she might look up while in the area. Nor did those names mean anything to the receptionist when Miss Pink wandered into the office in a search for postcards. She did elicit the information that she was the only English person to have stayed at the Thunderbird this year and she retired to her room well pleased with the way things were going. She now knew whom she had to find in the morning, and she had her guidelines for the interview.
⋆
‘The idea is to collect enough material for my producer to form a judgement. You could say I’m a kind of scout, looking to see if it’s worth bringing in a camera team.’
‘So what exactly brings you to Seeping Springs?’ asked the Texas Ranger.
She had run him to earth in a kind of prefabricated office on the edge of town. Rod Larsen was a portly, grizzled fellow edging towards retirement and predictably curious at the idea of an elderly spinster researching for a television documentary on cross-border crime in West Texas.
‘I was available,’ she said, wilfully misunderstanding him, ‘and it means only a couple of days away from my travel book.’ She had told him she was following the California Trail.
‘I meant why Seeping Springs? Why not Presidio or Brownsville?’
She blinked. ‘I didn’t ask them. It would have been a tip no doubt, a telephone call from a stringer? No, not from Seeping Springs. I expect some BBC journalist in Dallas or Houston saw a clipping. About yourself perhaps? You must make the headlines often enough.’
‘More than that.’ He looked smug, leaning back in his chair, relaxing. ‘So how’re you going to go about this?’
‘If you have no objection I’ll take notes – just facts, you know, and statistics. They’re always impressive. In travel writing, for instance, one doesn’t say it’s cold – that’s a value judgement; you say it’s fifty below, and everyone knows what you mean.’
‘I like it. We don’t deal in value judgements here neither. What kind of facts?’
‘At the Thunderbird they gave me masses of information – gossip, I should say –’
‘Who were you talking to?’
‘Some widowed ladies – snowbirds, is that the term? Mrs Harshberg is a historian from Minnesota, spends the winter in Texas. They told me cocaine and marijuana comes across the river on pack trains that meet up with trucks on this side.’
‘Old ladies’ gossip.’
‘That’s what I thought.’ She looked rueful. ‘It made an exciting story though, from my point of view.’
‘They got it wrong about cocaine. It’s mostly marijuana here, some heroin, no coke. But it’s exciting enough.’ He was grim. ‘The Drug Enforcement people lost one of their officers a while back when a load was coming across the river at night. They don’t use that run no longer, but they’ll be back, soon as they figure the crossing’s safe again.’
‘You can’t patrol the whole border.’
‘If we could, how do we reach the planes? There are landing strips in the Mexican mountains and those little planes can land on a sixpence, Vietnam vets piloting them, and they can fly! On this side of the river the spreads are so big a plane can touch down, drop his load and be away before anyone on the ranch is the wiser. The guys on the ground, they use pie pans and charcoal fuel for landing lights. Or they hack out their own landing-strips back in the hills, cut down the brush so the wings don’t touch. The strip’s invisible ’cept from the air. They drive goats across to cover the wheel marks. We can still find ’em though.’ He grinned. ‘Narcotics was waiting one time when a plane come down, moved in while the prop was still turning. The pilot, normally he stays inside ready to goose it if there’s an emergency. But this guy didn’t, he was snorting cocaine and when the agents moved in he went for his gun but the seats had been pushed forward, make room for the load, they had so much. Couldn’t find his pistol so he ran: straight into the prop. He was decapitated.’ Miss Pink swallowed. ‘Sorta thing your producer might go for?’ he asked.
‘You know it’s more than they could use.’ She was reproving. ‘Can you give me some statistics?’
‘Why not? It’s estimated that twenty-five per cent of air traffic through here is carrying illegal cargo. A Cessna can carry six to eight hundred pounds of drugs. The Cessna 210 has a range of around nine hundred miles. They’ll pay fifty thousand dollars for rent of an airstrip. Narcotics reckon to catch one in ten runners.’
‘Why don’t they catch more?’
‘Someone has to talk, and mostly they don’t. Terror keeps them quiet but sometimes, for one reason or another – greed, revenge, just for the hell of it – a guy will inform. We depend on informants in this business.’
‘And I suppose you might suggest immunity if they turned to informing.’ She was guileless.
‘They can be turned round.’
‘They continue to work for the organisation?’
‘You got it. Nearly all our arrests are based on information received.’
‘It must be hideously dangerous for the men concerned.’
‘It’s all of that. If an informant’s caught, the penalty is hanging by barbed wire.’ If he was trying to shock her he’d succeeded. ‘They’re tortured first,’ he went on. ‘Not too much, or they wouldn’t appreciate the points of the hanging.’ And he laughed at what was no doubt an old joke.
She closed her eyes. ‘How?’ she asked.
‘Burning’s the method of choice. No equipment needed, just cigarettes.’
‘My God!’
‘It’s effective. As a deterrent. Other informants go to ground after a wire-hanging. Some disappear, vanish into thin air. There was a hanging back in the spring on this side of the river. Usually they’re on the other side. This was a warning to an Anglo operating on the American bank and the young fellow I was after just faded away two or three days after the body was found. Some snowbirds discovered it. They use some hot springs down on the river-bank, soak in ’em, do their arthritis a power of good. They saw this body hanging from a cottonwood soon as they come down one morning.’
‘Are you telling me that a white man was tortured and hanged in barbed wire, in Texas?’ She considered this. ‘That could have been what my producer saw in a newspaper, or heard about.’
‘It didn’t make the media, not the wire bit, or the torture, and the snowbirds wouldn’t talk, not if they wanted to keep coming down here for the winter: “Hear all, see all … ” You know how it goes. It was in the local paper but just as an Hispanic found hanged. He wasn’t white. I was interested in the Anglo, the one who disappeared. He used to stay at the Thunderbird when he came by.’
‘Brett Vogel,’ Miss Pink murmured.
‘What was that, ma’am?’
‘Is there a local Narcotics agent called Brett Vogel?’
‘Not in my time. I never heard the name.’
‘My mistake. He must be in California. No matter. About this informant of yours, the one who disappeared –’
‘He wasn’t an informant yet. I was
working on him, on the quiet: slip away, have a few beers with him after dark, blinds drawn, feeling him out. It’s a delicate business, trying to turn them around.’
‘Evidently he was about to “come over” – is that the term? – or he wouldn’t have run. Perhaps he thought he’d been seen with you. Would a man like that set up in business elsewhere?’
‘You mean, try to set up his own operation? He couldn’t do it nowhere along the border. Word would have gone out all the way from the Gulf to the coast. No one would employ him, no one would allow him to operate; he wouldn’t dare. If he’s still operating it’s in another country, like Burma, and even there he’s going under a different name. For my money he’s working some other kinda scam where he’s never likely to meet someone who knew him when he was running drugs.’
‘That’s a good point.’ Her pen poised, Miss Pink approved the change of direction. ‘What else goes on here besides the drugs traffic?’
‘Illegal aliens: “wetbacks” we call ’em. Then there’s artefacts, old Indian stuff comes across, artwork, jewellery, that kinda thing. There’s wildlife.’
‘I mean smuggling.’
‘Yes, wildlife. Rarities like tarantulas, Gila monsters, some kinds of snakes, tropical birds – not them so much, they take up a lot of room – you name it, if the traffic’s illegal and valuable, someone’s going to smuggle it.’
As her jet levelled out above the Sonora Desert Miss Pink wondered if she should have abandoned the disguise of television researcher, should have taken Rod Larsen into her confidence and asked him for a description of the drugs runner who had stayed at the Thunderbird. Or for that matter have asked the question of the ruffle-permed receptionist, even the widows, who might have been there last April. But there was no way she could have obtained this information without implying that she knew the man, and even if she could withstand the consequent barrage of questions, could lie effectively, Larsen might trace her back to Dogtown. And whatever scam Vogel was engaged in now, if he were the runner who had vanished from the Thunderbird, even if his present scam involved heroin, she had to think again before she would expose him to the fate that had overtaken the Mexican informant. If the authorities got on his trail, in no time the criminals would follow. No way, she thought, regarding the pen that she had found in the glove compartment of the Jeep. Only three of the people involved in this business could be associated with that pen and two of them were English, and no English people had stayed at the Thunderbird this year before her own arrival.