by Don Travis
He nodded and picked up the little flip phone. “Not exactly a Samsung Galaxy.”
“But it’s what’s needed at the moment. Now, take a look at this.” I removed a photograph from my folio and slid it across the table to Diego.
Once he focused on it, he squinted. “Why, that’s me! No. But it could be. Who is he?”
“He was a worker at the Pines who was ambushed and shot to death as he left the winery property about 2:30 a.m. exactly seventeen days after you first broke into the place.”
“Oh my God! You think Spider and Hugo thought they were ambushing me?”
“Do you?”
“How was he killed? I mean, at a distance or up close.”
“Close. Small caliber. Probably a .22 or .25.”
He frowned. “That doesn’t make sense. If they were that close, they’d have grabbed me and roughed me up until I told them where the artifact was. Then they might have killed me.”
“Logical. But sometimes logic doesn’t play into it. Does either Natander or Pastis have a hair trigger?”
Diego nodded. “Spider does. But he’d have shot me in the legs or something just to stop me. When he got what he wanted, well….”
“I understand. But you have to face the possibility that a young man named Bas Zuniga died because you broke into the winery.”
Chapter 16
I DROVE back to the office squarely on the horns of a dilemma. My agreement with Yardley and Muñoz required me to share information with them. Yet I didn’t want to confess all until I’d talked to Del. Diego would be far better off turning himself in to the authorities, but not until he was represented by counsel. As I parked in my spot in the office lot, I decided to walk the block and a half to Del’s office and see if I couldn’t squeeze in a meeting. He’d probably be busy as hell right before a three-day holiday, but he could damn well make time for me. After all, I’d saved his butt in that Zozobra foul-up three years ago. But I’d probably ridden that horse pretty well to death. I was no sooner out of the Impala when the phone rang.
It was Hazel. “Where are you?”
“Downstairs in the parking lot. I’m going to see if I can get a word with Del—”
“Come on up. We’ve got a problem.”
I knew her well enough not to try to pull the facts out of her, so I took the back stairwell to the third floor and rushed into the office. She and Charlie were both waiting for me.
“Someone just tried to kill German C de Baca.”
“Probably just trying to get information out of him,” Charlie said in a more reasonable voice.
“Then why is he in the hospital?” Hazel asked.
We automatically gravitated to the small conference table in my office, where I made sense out of the situation. A few minutes earlier, Hazel took a call from a woman who identified herself as Consuela C de Baca de Simpson. She was calling because her brother German was attacked in his office and beaten badly. Although he was rushed to the UNM hospital, he’d managed to tell her to contact me to ask if I knew how to get in touch with Diego.
When I reached Consuela at the number she left with Hazel, she apparently remembered our aborted telephone conversation sometime back.
“Did you find him?” she asked as soon as I identified myself.
I hedged. “You mean Diego? I talked to him once, but I don’t know where he is at the moment. Can you tell me what happened to your brother?”
As she told the story, German was accosted while alone in his office by two masked men demanding to know where Diego was. When her brother tried to reason with the intruders, they beat him ruthlessly. Even so, he could not give them information he did not have. Then they asked about access to the winery other than through the doors to the building. At this point I interrupted her.
“Did he give them that information?”
“Give it to them? He doesn’t know anything about a secret way into the winery. And neither do I. Do you?”
“How would I know?”
I can equivocate with the best of them when necessary. So Ernesto didn’t share the secret room with anyone but Diego, his favorite son… or a troubled one who might need a place to hide from the world.
Apparently after German lost consciousness, the two assailants—Natander and Pastis, most likely—left. I heard the rest of the story and then told her to get in touch with Lt. Raymond Yardley at the New Mexico State Police.
“Why?” she asked. “The Albuquerque police are handling the incident.”
“Because Yardley has some knowledge the city cops don’t. Who’s handling it for APD?”
“I don’t know who the detective was, but right now there’s a Lt. Eugene Enriquez here.”
“Here? Are you at the hospital?”
“I am.”
“Let me speak to the lieutenant, please. I know him.”
After a pause, my old APD partner’s tired voice came across the line. “I mighta known you’d show up in this case somehow. What can you tell me?”
I filled him in on everything, withholding only that I was in contact with Diego. He listened silently, interrupting with pithy questions only occasionally.
“Okay. You gotta bring him in, you know that.”
“Have to find him first.”
“Don’t gimme that shit. You found him, so you know his haunts. Go get him and bring him to my office.”
“Yardley and Muñoz have a claim on him too.”
“And probably the feds as well. But I’m the one’s got a violent crime committed. I want him.”
“Murder’s pretty violent,” I reminded him.
“You think he’s involved in that?”
I shook my head even though he couldn’t see me. “No, I don’t. I’ll see what I can do.”
I hung up and dialed the cell phone I’d given Diego. He answered with a hesitant “Hello.”
“Diego, your brother’s been beaten by two men asking for you and about a hidden room at the winery. They put him in the hospital. My old APD partner’s in charge of his case, and I told him I’d talked to you.”
“Shit, man, I trusted you.”
“And I honored that trust. But things have changed now. Members of your family have been harmed and threatened. You have to turn yourself in.”
“What about that lawyer you talked about?”
“I can have him there when you do it.”
“I gotta think this over.”
“Does German know about Nancy?”
“Oh yeah. He’s even met her a couple of times.”
“Then we have to assume they questioned him about people you knew and might turn to when you’re in trouble. They may know about her.”
Diego indulged in some dark GI vulgarisms. “They might come after her?”
“Not if you turn yourself over to the cops. No point in it then.”
His hesitation told me he was considering it. “I wanna talk to that lawyer first.”
“So you don’t mind putting her in danger?”
“I’ll just have her tell them I headed out to turn myself in to the police as soon as I heard about German. That ought to take the heat off her.”
“Speaking of the cops, they’re probably already on the way to Nancy’s house right now.” Sensing I’d lose his trust completely if I insisted on turning him in, I changed tactics. “Have Nancy drive you to the winery. Go underground until you hear from me. I won’t lead them to you until you’ve had a chance to think things over. Okay? But one thing’s clear. You’ll have to turn yourself in sooner or later. I’ll call you after I talk to Del… uh, the lawyer.”
“That’s a problem. My cell phone doesn’t work from inside the cave, so I’ll bet this cheapie doesn’t either. Tell you what. Go up the road east of the Pines just short of where it dead-ends. Off to the right, you’ll see the remains of an old cabin.”
“I know where it is. I’ve walked every inch of that ground.”
He gave me instructions what to do when I reached the place and war
ned me to watch for a tail. “Hell, Spider might be out there already, just waiting. This is probably what he hoped I’d do when he got to German.”
“Are you armed?” I asked.
“Naw, but I got a mean club with nails in it in the hideout.”
“Don’t use it on me.”
“Depends.”
“Depends? On what?”
“On whether I can trust you or not.”
“Look, guy. Maybe you’d better find your own way to the authorities.”
“I didn’t mean it. You’re the only hope I’ve got. I thought about just taking off to California or somewhere where nobody knows me. Maybe that’s still what I ought to do.”
“Your choice. But believe me, it’s very hard to live anywhere without leaving a trail. Natander and Pastis might not have the contacts to find you, but the police do. Do I come to the Pines or not?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you better get your ass out there right now.”
I’M NOT certain why I didn’t call Gene and have him accompany me to the Pines. Or for that matter, why I didn’t alert Gonda to what was going on, but I didn’t. I’d told Diego he could trust me, and I would keep my word for as long as possible.
It took me more time than usual to get to the winery because I parked in Plácido and walked through the forest. I also circled far to the north before approaching the ruins of the log cabin. The cabin remains had a pitiful, sad feeling about them. They told of a life in the past that no longer existed. Despite the lack of a roof, the sheltering pine trees left the interior in deep shadow.
I took concealment in the woods fifty feet from the wreckage and settled down to wait. I spotted movement, but my blood pressure dropped to nearly normal when Diego, still astride his bicycle, paused at the edge of the wood to observe the scene carefully. As he hid the mountain bike in some bushes, I resisted the urge to call to him. He darted to the front of the building’s carcass, slowing to avoid a patch of sand at the threshold before slipping inside the building and disappearing into the gloom.
After another ten minutes to make certain he wasn’t followed by Natander or Pastis, I slipped inside the collapsed structure and followed the instructions Diego gave me on the phone. Even though I knew what to do, I had trouble spotting the specific planking I was looking for. The cabin once had a wooden floor, but much of it was gone. I finally settled on a board roughly the size of the bottom half of a dutch door. But that couldn’t be the right one. There were pine needles all over the wood, even though Diego entered just minutes ago. Nonetheless, I grasped the right edge of the plank and lifted. It came up relatively easy, but the debris atop it remained in place. I examined it more closely and found it covered by burlap, to which the needles and leaves and even small rocks were cemented.
Even then, I was confounded. There appeared to be solid earth beneath the raised planking. Then a stubby, rusted nail caught my attention. I grasped it and tugged upward. The bottom fell away with a click, revealing a ladder. I took my place a few rungs down and carefully restored the debris-covered plank. Then I crept blindly down a few more rungs before pushing the trapdoor back into place. Enveloped in total gloom, I fumbled my way to the bottom, rung after careful rung, and used the tiny beam of light from my cell phone to locate another ladder. As I climbed it, the faint glow of a lantern ushered me up into a spacious cavern.
When I cleared the tunnel, I was startled to see a figure brandishing a club like a Louisville slugger. Just as I grunted in surprise, Diego relaxed and dropped the business end of the club to the ground.
“You weren’t expecting me?” Anger tinged my voice.
“Yeah, but what if it had been Spider? He coulda followed me. I don’t usually come and go this time of day.”
“He didn’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I watched you arrive and waited around to see if he showed. He didn’t.” I looked around at my surroundings. The place was probably twenty-by-twenty, with a head clearance of around eight feet at its apex. An old cot and ancient dresser sat at the far side of the cave, while a table with peeling white paint attended by two chairs took up this end. Two electric lanterns relieved the gloom. Diego’s hideout wasn’t as cold as the wine cellar on the other side of the wall, but a man would need a sweater if he stayed for long.
“Neat, huh?”
“How in the hell did you find this place?”
Diego leaned his nail-studded bat against a wall and walked to the table. After taking one of the chairs, he invited me to sit in the other. “The fellow my dad bought the land from showed him the big cavern. That’s why he was interested in the place. That cave looked to be the right place for a wine cellar. The place was just about square except for this recess here.”
“So it was open to the big cavern?”
“Yeah. Or so my dad said.”
“He’s the one who made a secret room out of it?”
“Him and my Uncle Juan. I never knew my uncle, but he was said to be a heller. That tumbled-down cabin where you entered the tunnel was where he lived. Wasn’t ever married, but he sure liked other men’s wives. Always in trouble. Sometimes he found himself needing a place to hang out while a storm or a mad husband passed. He’s the one who dug the tunnel. Him and my dad rigged the door closing this off from the cellar.”
I shook my head. “And they never told anyone about the place?”
“Not even after one of those husbands caught Uncle Juan in a bar over in Bernalillo and put a bullet through his head. Only one Dad shared the secret with was me.”
“Why you?”
Diego managed to look rueful. “I was a handful when I was younger. Always in some scrape with the law or someone. He showed it to me one day when he hid me from the county sheriff until he could clear up the mess.”
I got up and walked to the wall abutting the wine cellar. The outline of a door was clear from this side. I ran my hand down it. “Diego, I examined every inch of the other side of this wall. I couldn’t find anything that looked like this.”
He walked up beside me. “Uncle Juan was something of an engineer. He’s the one who designed this.” He grasped a small lever and pulled it down. Then he used it to pull the door to the right. It rolled easily and almost silently. Instantly the wine cellar came into view. The couch where I’d spent the night wasn’t more than ten yards to the left. Now I knew what that rumbling sound I’d heard was.
He fingered the right side of the opening. “Here’s why you couldn’t find it.”
The C de Baca who crafted this entrance years ago left the natural contour of a fold of rock and simply faced the door with matching rock. From the other side, there would be nothing to reveal the presence of the door. Just the normal, natural contours and crevices of the rock wall on both sides of the door. I stepped back into the hideout and took a closer look at the door. It was an actual slab of natural rock mounted on rollers. That was why thumping on the wall hadn’t given off a sound different from any other place.
Diego closed the door and lifted the lever.
“Okay,” I said. “There must be a way to open the door from the other side. How?”
He fished in his pocket and came out with a device that looked like a slender, tapered awl. “With this. I slide it into a certain place in the crevice and it triggers the release just like the lever does on this side.”
I went back and sat down at the rickety table. “Let’s see if I have this straight. When you returned from the Army and eluded your two minders, you needed a place to hide. So you came here. But you couldn’t access this room from the cabin because you’d barred that entrance before leaving for the Army. That’s why you broke into the winery.”
“Right. I kept the awl with me all the time I was in the Army. Lugged it all over Iraq. Dad kept another one here in his toolbox. It looked just like all his other tools.”
“But you planned the break-in right down to bringing a crowbar with you.”
“Got i
t in a hardware store in Albuquerque and stowed it in my duffel bag.”
“Duffel bag. That’s where you carried the artifact too. Right?”
“Right. You wanna see her?”
“In a minute. I need to get the rest of this straight. While you were hiding out, why did you keep going into the wine cellar? It’s not like you were stealing food or drink.”
“In a way it was. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I don’t have plumbing here. I needed to haul in my water, not to mention emptying the chamber pot. Where’s the closest water and bathroom?”
“On the other side of that wall. But you could do that at night when the place was closed.”
“And I did. Mostly. Once or twice I ventured out when I felt the need for some liquid refreshment. Never had a problem.”
“Until I almost caught you.”
“Yeah, and that was at night during the safe time. You really spooked me when I figured out somebody was in the cavern with me. You were too close to the door for me to just slip back out, so—”
“So you rolled a bottle on the floor to lure me away. Wonder how the hell we missed seeing one another? I was supposed to be on guard watching for just that sort of thing.”
“You were tired by then, I guess.”
WE SAT at the rickety table while I examined Our Lady of the Euphrates. She was as Diego described her, about ten or eleven inches high, the fired-clay effigy of a hippy woman. Bits of gold paint clung to a crude diadem. Smears of black above her eyes reminded me of kohl-eyed Egyptian pieces. Nothing special to look at, she nonetheless represented a cultural treasure… a Christian sculpture born in the midst of Islam. That she survived virtually unbroken represented a miracle. Few such intact clay pieces survived a 1,000-year history.
“Not much to look at, is she?” Diego said after a lengthy silence.
“Not unless you’re a museum curator or clergy… or a collector. To them she looks beautiful.”
“Or like money,” he added.
I lifted my eyes to meet his. “I assume you’re Catholic. Why doesn’t she mean something to you?”