Always Time to Die

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Okay,” he said.

  She blinked. “That’s it? No argument? Just okay?”

  “Keep it in mind when you start objecting to commonsense advice.”

  “You don’t advise, you order.”

  He just looked at her.

  She blew out a breath. “Okay.”

  Smiling, Dan kissed her quickly and shot out of bed before he changed his mind.

  Or she did.

  TAOS

  MONDAY MORNING

  38

  DAN PARKED IN FRONT OF HIS PARENTS’ HOUSE, NEXT TO THE OLD CAR THEY HAD last seen in front of Lucia Sandoval’s house.

  “I won’t be long,” Dan said to Carly. “Wait here. I’ll leave the engine running so you keep warm.”

  She gave him a sideways look. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  “I’m offering you a chance to avoid what might be an ugly family wrangle.”

  “About?”

  “Opiates.”

  She reached for the handle and opened the door.

  He cursed under his breath, got out, and held the little gate open for her. As she walked by, he took her arm and stopped her. “Whatever you hear doesn’t go into Winifred’s damned history without my mother’s permission.”

  “I don’t think your mother will give it.”

  “She has a right to her privacy. So does Lucia, whose only mistake was to fall in love with the wrong man.”

  Carly looked into Dan’s eyes, shadowed and green and determined. “I’ll respect their privacy.”

  “Thank you.” He shifted almost angrily, releasing her. “I don’t like doing this.”

  “Asking me to censor a family history?”

  “That, too.”

  Dan knocked on the door and called out. His father’s voice called back.

  “Great,” Dan muttered. “That will put a real gloss on this clusterhug.”

  “Clusterhug. Is that a word?”

  “It is in my mother’s house.”

  Carly bit her lip against a smile. The idea of a man like Dan tiptoeing around his mother appealed to her. “Gotcha.”

  The door opened. John grinned when he saw them. “Answered prayers. Your mother and Lucia are in the greenhouse talking about woman things.”

  “Carly is your answer,” Dan said, gesturing her into the house. “I need to talk to Mom.”

  John’s smile vanished. “It better not be about your great-grandfather.”

  “It isn’t.” This time.

  “Fresh coffee in the kitchen,” John said to Carly. “You want some, Dan?”

  “No thanks. This will be short and sweet.” I hope.

  Dan went through the kitchen to the attached greenhouse. The temperature was about that of the kitchen. The humidity was higher.

  “Hi, Mom,” he said, hugging her briefly. “Lucia. How are the kids?”

  “Healthy and in school,” she said, rolling her eyes in relief. “Your mother’s medicines are such a help.”

  “They can be.” Dan’s smile vanished as he looked at his mother. “Or they can hurt.”

  Diana drew in a sharp, shocked breath.

  “Who supplies you and Winifred with opiates for your medicines?” he asked. “Armando?”

  Lucia made a small sound.

  “What do you know of opiates?” Diana asked.

  “A lot more than you want to hear.” He glanced at Lucia. “Isn’t that right?”

  She flushed and looked away.

  “Armando told you, didn’t he?” Dan pressed.

  She nodded slightly.

  “What?” Diana asked. “What are you talking about?”

  “Part of my work includes tracking black money,” Dan said evenly. “Illegal money. The kind Armando Sandoval and his kin make butt-loads of smuggling Mexican brown or Colombian cocaine, depending on which branch of the family he’s working with on a load.”

  Diana shrugged. Everyone knew what Armando did. “So?”

  “So when I got too close, his Colombian kin put out a contract on me.” Absently Dan rubbed his left leg. “The story about a climbing accident was just that, a story.”

  This time Diana wasn’t the only one who made a shocked sound. Carly had been standing in the doorway, listening. Her eyes were wide and horrified.

  Lucia crossed herself and looked at the floor in shame. “Lo siento.”

  He knew she was sorry, just as he knew she loved her husband anyway. She had walled herself off from reality until she was able to see Armando only as her man and the father of her children.

  “It has nothing to do with you,” Dan said, touching Lucia briefly. “But it has everything to do with my question.”

  “Why?” John asked coolly. “Have you come to arrest your mother on drug charges?”

  “You know better.”

  “Then why do you care? She doesn’t use enough opiates to make a blip on anybody’s radar.”

  “I’ve been assuming that Carly was the target of the drugging at Sylvia’s memorial service,” Dan said. “But it could have been me. Armando could have figured this would be a good, clean shot at finishing the contract.”

  Lucia put her hands over her ears and shook her head. “No! He said nothing about that. He just laughed when I said you were hurt climbing. I hear that laugh before. I know it has to do with…business.”

  Dan looked at his mother. The darkness in her eyes made him wish he hadn’t opened his mouth. “You and Winifred share the same source for opiates.”

  “Yes,” Diana said. “Alma.”

  “She certainly would have had the opportunity,” Carly said from the doorway. “But she was sick, too, wasn’t she?”

  “Sí. Yes,” Lucia said.

  “I never ask where Alma gets her medicines,” Diana said. “Ultimately, I suppose it is Armando.”

  “Medicines.” Dan’s lips turned down. “Hell of a name for it.”

  “The way I use opiates is medicine, just as it was before Anglo laws changed what was legal and what wasn’t, but didn’t change poverty and disease. Los curanderos exist because there is a need. We use what we have always used, the gifts of the land, poppy and peyote, morning glory and mushroom.” Diana’s dark eyes glittered with anger and impatience. “No Anglo law will change that.”

  It was an old argument, one that wasn’t going anywhere new, especially as Dan didn’t really disagree.

  “The point is that someone put an overdose of opiates in the cups we all drank at the memorial service,” Dan said.

  Diana’s hand went to her throat. “But I heard it was the food.”

  “No, it was an attempt to murder Carly or, maybe, me. Since no one has notified me about a new death threat, I have to assume Carly was the target. At least, until Armando tells me otherwise.” Dan looked at Lucia. “Call him. Tell him to meet me at the Pico de Gallo in Las Trampas in half an hour.”

  TAOS

  FRIDAY MORNING

  39

  “WHY CAN’T I COME WITH YOU?” CARLY ASKED. “WHY SHOULD GUS HAVE TO RUN down and check on me every few minutes?”

  “Every half hour.”

  “Whatever. You know what I mean. And I’m not talking about the archive babysitting rules.”

  Dan looked at the woman standing in the middle of the crowded basement. Cold air filtered down the stairway through the gaps in the cellar door that was also part of the basement’s roof. His leg felt like something was gnawing on it.

  He ignored everything but Carly. “The man I’m going to see is an international narcotraficante. I don’t even want you in the same country with him, much less the same room. He’s good for five murders on both sides of the border that we know of, and that doesn’t include the poor illegals who died in the desert carrying forty-kilo backpacks of Mexican brown over the border in the middle of the desert. All those men wanted was a chance at a better life. What they got was death.”

  Her chin came up. “I read the newspapers and watch TV. I know what happens.”

  “But i
t doesn’t happen to you. I want to keep it that way. I’ll be back before lunch. If you aren’t here, you’d better be in the office with Gus or with my parents.”

  “Is that advice or an order?” she asked through clenched teeth.

  “Whatever works.”

  When she would have argued, he distracted her by sticking his tongue in her mouth and kissing her until she softened and returned the favor. And the flavor. Slowly, reluctantly, he lifted his head.

  “Be here for me, Carolina May.”

  “You’re not playing fair.”

  “I’m not playing at all.”

  “Like I said…” She closed her eyes for an instant. “Okay, okay. You win.”

  “No, we win.”

  She watched him walk up the stairs and out into the overcast, snow-threatening day. The scars she had seen and touched on his leg this morning were red, barely healed; she knew they must hurt. Yet he refused to let it slow him down.

  In or out of bed.

  Don’t go there, Carly told herself quickly. The man was way too distracting and she had a lot of work to do if she hoped to have a rough draft of Winifred’s history in the next few weeks. Even if Dan came through with a bridge program to transfer material from microfilm to scanner to her computer, she would still be working sixteen-hour days to meet Winifred’s new deadline.

  Mentally bracing herself, Carly went to the microfilm files. Somewhere in all those metal boxes was the answer to old questions and two very new ones.

  Who was trying to kill her?

  And why?

  LAS TRAMPAS

  FRIDAY MORNING

  40

  SNOW LAY SPARSELY ALONG THE NARROW ROAD. THE HOUSING WAS A COMBINATION of cement block on the newer buildings and ragged, cracked adobe on the older ones. Both new and old buildings had tin roofs. House trailers of all ages and conditions hunched beside the uncertain protection of sagging wooden barns and outbuildings. Fences were made of willow posts and old boxspring mattress frames and discarded tires. Chickens and lop-eared mutts scratched out a living side by side in the cold mud.

  Occasional bursts of prosperity showed in houses covered by bright paint or brighter murals. Dan had parked near one of them. The long two-story building’s ancient adobe bricks were hidden beneath a painting that combined the artistic traditions of Mexico’s muralists with the flowing graffiti of barrio gangs. The result was darkly colorful and oddly menacing, a blunt statement that strangers weren’t welcome.

  Dan had ignored it. The combination beer bar and taqueria was open, but as soon as he’d said he was Dan Duran and had come to talk to Armando Sandoval, everyone except the barkeep/cook had packed up and gone somewhere else. Dan wasn’t surprised. He took his beer to a newly vacated table and waited. The room smelled of Mexican cigarettes, beer, fresh tortillas, and roasted peppers. The tables were like the men who had sat around them—dark, sturdy, and scuffed by use.

  Methodically Dan began emptying his pockets onto the table. As he’d left everything but keys and some money locked in the truck, it didn’t take long. He toed off his boots, set them on the table, and took a sip of beer. It tasted like South America, thick and rich, earthy.

  Somewhere in the back of the building a door slammed. A minute later two men younger than Dan strode into the room. The first man was slim and dressed in black but for a belt with a solid gold buckle. There was a heavy diamond-studded gold cross hanging around his neck. The gun he carried was steel with silver and gold inlays. The briefcase was the same supple black leather as his jacket and pants. The second man wore jeans rather than leather pants. His gun was all steel and fully automatic. The blind muzzle followed Dan’s heart.

  The barkeep went into the kitchen. He didn’t come back.

  Without a word Dan stood up, held his arms out from his sides, widened his stance, and waited to be searched.

  The first man looked at the stuff on the table approvingly. “Señor Sandoval, he said you would understand.”

  The second man stepped to the side where he’d be able to keep Dan under his gun without getting in the way.

  Dan watched with interest as the first man pulled a lightweight, very sensitive metal detector from the case. Cutting-edge and very expensive.

  Not a low-tech operation. No surprise there.

  Sandoval might use human mules for his heroin and pistol-whip people he didn’t like, but when it came to conducting business he protected himself with the best technology money could buy.

  The man put the metal detector back, pulled out another piece of equipment, and all but combed Dan’s hair and clothes with it down to and including shoving it inside his underwear.

  Wish I’d had this model in Colombia, Dan thought wryly. Bet I’d have found the bug before they used it to track me down. Then those kids wouldn’t have been killed.

  But he wouldn’t think about that. He needed to stay calm, businesslike, in control.

  The bug detector went back into the case.

  The final test was as old-fashioned as pistol-whipping—a thorough, slyly sexual pat-down that the slim man enjoyed more than Dan did. Dan knew the search was meant to be intimidating and humiliating. It failed. He’d been through a lot worse.

  “Bueno,” the man said, taking Dan’s boots and walking out of the room.

  Dan watched his boots disappear. “Careful with those. I just got them broken in.”

  “Sit,” said the second man, the one whose gun muzzle kept staring at Dan’s heart.

  Dan scooped his keys and change off the table and sat.

  And sat.

  No impatience showed on Dan’s face or in his posture. He leaned back, crossed his arms over his chest, and did a good imitation of falling asleep.

  Just one more part of the game.

  Armando must have had better things to do than watch his caller sleep. After fifteen minutes he put an end to the nap by walking into the room. The gun in his shoulder holster was obvious enough. The gun in his boot less so.

  Dan spotted them both. He didn’t react. He wasn’t here for a fight and he doubted Armando was, either. The narcotraficante was simply doing the machismo dance so as not to lose respect with his men.

  He hadn’t liked being told to meet Dan.

  Dan knew it, just as he knew that the pat-down by un pato had been Armando’s revenge.

  “I am busy,” Armando said. “What do you want?”

  The bluntness surprised Dan. He’d been expecting a lot of fencing, a lot of posturing. Armando must have a load coming or going right now.

  Not my problem, Dan reminded himself. Not this time. This time my only problem is keeping Carolina May alive.

  “I’m on medical leave,” Dan said. “In other words, I’m not in New Mexico for any other than personal reasons. Personal, not professional. Tú comprendes?”

  Armando’s thick black eyebrows rose at the use of the intimate address rather than the more formal Spanish.

  “Sí.” And his tone said that he wasn’t buying it, not completely.

  “Did you tell Alma to put opiates in Sylvia’s death toast?” Dan asked.

  Armando didn’t even try to hide his surprise. Of all the questions he’d expected Dan to ask, obviously this wasn’t even close. He looked at Dan and shook his head. “No.”

  Dan believed him. “Do you know who did?”

  Armando shrugged. He didn’t know and he didn’t care. “Señorita Winifred is old. The old people make errors—mistakes. Even las brujas.”

  Dan studied the other man. There was no nervousness, no shifting of feet or licking of lips, no unconscious gestures with his hands, no looking away. Either he was an uncommonly good liar or he was telling what he believed to be the truth.

  “Bueno,” Dan said. “Do you have any professional or personal interest in Ms. Carolina May?”

  Armando frowned. “I no like her and Lucia.” He lifted his shoulders slightly in a shrug. “But is a small thing, like a fly buzzing.”

  A corner of Dan’s mouth tu
rned up. “Are your Colombian cousins still trying to kill me?”

  “In Colombia, maybe, but not here. Here I am el jefe. I say killing well-connected Anglos is bad for business.”

  “Yeah. You’d be up to your lips in jalapeños real quick.”

  “Sí. New Mexico is not Colombia.”

  Yet.

  And Dan was doing everything he could to keep it that way.

  TAOS

  FRIDAY NOON

  41

  CARLY STRETCHED, THEN BENT OVER THE MICROFILM READER AND WENT BACK TO work on the articles about the death of Isobel Castillo Quintrell in 1880, when she was only thirty. Reading between the lines, Isobel had been worn out by marrying at fifteen, then bearing three live children, plus ten premature or stillborn babies in the next fifteen years.

  “They had methods of birth control then,” Carly murmured into her recorder. “It must have been obvious what all the pregnancies were costing her. Why didn’t…cancel that. She was a deeply religious Catholic wife.”

  Carly read quickly, skimming for the facts she would need to recreate the funeral in print. “‘Predeceased by only sister, Juana de Castillo y Castillo, tragically lost during the birth of her first child in 1872.’ Editorial comment: the Castillo sisters had a hard time with labor and pregnancy; maybe their parents married one too many cousins. Or maybe they married and started getting pregnant too early. Interesting. Wonder if there are any studies about the correlation between very young brides and wives dying very young.”

  Her eyes searched the text, looking for names of people attending the funeral. There weren’t any unfamiliar names, so she went to the next item on her list and read, talking occasionally into her recorder. For the Castillo book, she would include reproductions of newspaper articles and images; she was already compiling a list for Dan to transfer. What she needed now was some sense of how close the children of the Castillo sisters had been.