The roadway abruptly crested and I could see the breathtaking sweep of the mesa-top, so flat it appeared to be laser-leveled, the rim an abrupt and clean transition from brown earth to blue sky. From civil cases involving this desolate place and former owners, I knew that the mesa-top included more than 900 acres.
“As good a spot as any,” Waddell announced as he parked in a dusty patch, the thin mantle of topsoil beaten raw by machinery. We faced north, uncomfortably close to the vertical rim rock. When he dismounted, the rancher immediately walked to within a single step of eternity.
“How’s this for a grandstand seat?” The breeze touched his purple neckerchief. I zipped up my jacket and got out, running my hand along the fender. I could imagine my ankle twisting and me taking wing over the edge. Far below and to the north, the vehicles looked like Matchbox toys, the downed power poles like toothpicks cast willy-nilly. Somewhere hundreds of feet under our boots were the string of limestone caves that the Bureau of Land Management was thinking of developing. Telescope on top, caves underneath—it would be a hell of a tourist attraction.
“But you know, for all this, Bill, the real view is up here.” He swept his arm to take in the heavens, a full dome with a slightly rippled edge south at the San Cristóbals and another to the north marked by Cat Mesa outside of Posadas.
He dropped his arm. “Hell, you’ve seen it. You get yourself Orion just coming up in the early morning sky out there to the east in late summer, with all the planet traffic? Why, it’s enough to take your breath away. And then come winter the Milky Way turns around and cuts the sky in half. You know, I’ve seen SkyLab go over half a hundred times, and every time, I swear I can see ’em waving out the window.”
He gazed up into the sky. If he did it much longer, the sun would fry his retinas like bacon rinds.
“You’re too damn polite to ask, but you’ll want to know.” He turned and faced me, feet planted hard as if he expected me to take a swing at him. “Do you know what my mother said to me two years ago, just before she died?”
“I have no idea.”
“‘Go ahead and do it.’” It was that simple to her. I’d talked to her about all this, and she said to just do it. I explained the whole concept, and she tells me, ‘If it doesn’t work out, you’ll have tried.’” He shook his head slowly. “I never could work for her, all these years. I tried, back in the seventies. But Chicago wasn’t my idea of heaven.”
“This is, though?”
“Damn right. At least, it’s where I’m going to build heaven. Let me show you.”
He stepped to the truck and pulled a large cardboard tube out of the back seat. As he was working the plastic cap off, he looked across at me, eyes assessing.
“How are you weathering this shooting mess?”
“Mess is the right word.”
“I talked with Schroeder for a few minutes, after we were done with Fish-eyes in that inner sanctum,” Waddell said. “It almost seems like he’s trying to combine all three incidents—the Boyd kid’s death, the cop’s shooting, and then the thing with Jackie and the creep in the RV.”
“Two out of three, maybe,” I said.
He rapped the tube gently against the fender of the truck. “The family will sue you?”
“Oh, probably. That’s par for the course in these things. They look for somebody to blame.”
Waddell smiled in sympathy. “How many times in all your years with the department has someone tried to collect a pound of flesh from you?”
“Too often.” It wasn’t the sort of accomplishment I wished to inventory at that moment, so I let it go at that. Waddell regarded me solemnly.
“Jackie is a lucky young lady.”
“Yes, she is.”
“And Baum…that’s his name? He’s going to live, you think?”
“It looks that way.”
“So you’re not as good a shot as you used to be.” He took a deep breath and turned to survey the mesa. I waited for a welcome change of subject, and it wasn’t long in coming. He still held onto that cardboard tube, and my curiosity was building.
“What does our good sheriff think about young Boyd’s misadventure?”
I was sure “young Boyd” would call it worse than that if he could. “The sheriff doesn’t confide much,” I said. “I’m certainly not on his short list.”
“You’d probably be surprised at how close to the top of that list you really are,” Waddell said. “Did Estelle speculate?”
“Even less than the sheriff.”
Undaunted, Waddell tapped the tube on the hood again. “And what to you think?” he persisted.
“I’m not paid to think anymore. But I’ll say this…there’s nothing random in this gig. Boyd and whoever was with him picked a spot where they could work without interruption, with a pretty good plan of attack.”
“Boyd obviously wasn’t alone, though. We know that. Someone made off with his vehicle, that’s for damn sure.”
“Between you and me…” I stopped, because ships have been sunk with simpler little slips. Waddell didn’t need to know that Boyd’s clothing hadn’t borne the absolute evidence of creosote-stained sawdust. “Let’s just let it go at that. He had help, and they’ll catch the son-of-a-bitch.”
Waddell shook his head in silent disgust while he fished a can of Copenhagen out of his hip pocket. He concentrated on taking a delicate little pinch, placing it just so behind his lip. After he’d stowed the can, he turned to lean his back against the fender of the truck. “You know, I just don’t know how people hear about all this stuff. I hadn’t talked much with anybody, and already I have those assholes chainsawing down power poles. I have newspapers in Colorado ranting about conspiracies. Hell, I’ve even have a private security firm up in Denver shooting me proposals for when I’m up and running.” He grinned. “And that’s not even counting the dumb ones. You heard the rumor about the military, I’m sure. Do you know how many folks think that those big radio telescopes are actually used for earth-based listening? Like we’re going to monitor your damn cell phones?”
“Sure. I’ve heard that.” The rancher’s serious, pensive expression drew me up short. “You’re not taking them seriously.”
“Not the rumors, but the jerks who spread them? Damn straight. I am taking them seriously, as a matter of fact,” Waddell said. “And look where we are…the Boyd kid is dead, isn’t he. That’s how serious all of this is, Bill.” He paused, eyes squinting into the distance. “Have you ever visited the VLA up north? The Very Large Array?”
“Sure.”
“So you know that there are folks who think that installation is just a front for clandestine listening…satellite spyware at its best. And always clandestine, of course. First they listen in, then they’ll take your guns, then they’ll be after your pickup truck.”
“Pickups?”
“Hell yes. Anti-green, gas hogs that they are. Plus, in the Middle East, what do the rag-tags use as military vehicles?” He wagged a finger. “Pickups.”
“I refuse to be paranoid, no matter how many people are chasing me,” I laughed. “Life is too short for this kind of shit.”
“Well, sure enough it is.” Waddell heaved a huge sigh. “So…is this a warning to me?” He jerked his chin toward the ruined power poles far down below. “That’s the way I see it. I mean, who the hell else would be affected by cutting the power? And what asshole with half a brain is going to think dropping a few power poles will stop this project? Come on. I told Bobby Torrez the same thing.” Waddell thrust his hands in his pockets. “Goddamn freaks with too much free time.”
No hard evidence had surfaced indicating that Miles Waddell’s project, whatever it might be, was drawing fire, but it was a logical assumption—and enough to cause sleepless nights, I was sure. I nodded at the cardboard tube. “So what’s the deep, dark secret?”
He popped the to
p off the tube. “This is a hell of an undertaking for a country boy,” he said. Adopted country, maybe, I thought.
“My mother was ninety-one when she died,” Waddell said. The rolled plans, if that’s what they were, remained half in the tube. “Still sharp as a tack, still hating most things about life since my father died thirty years ago. I showed her this set of plans, and she didn’t say much. But I saw her eyes twinkle. The day—the day before she died, she sent this to me.” He handed me a single sheet of neatly folded correspondence. In violet ink, the writer had printed two sentences: Let’s see what you can do with it. Make it worthwhile and be content.
I read it twice, then handed it back. “That’s it?”
“That’s it. Well,” and he waved a negligent hand, “you know all the legal paperwork. The lawyers have to carve out their pound, Bill. But when all said and done, yeah. That’s it.”
“I should ask what the ‘it’ is,” I said.
“I was her stepson, too, you know. Goddamn stepson. I guess I’m the only souvenir of the man she loved.”
“And what’s the it?”
“Just between you and me?”
I glanced around us as if checking for eavesdroppers.
Waddell patted the tube and its partially withdrawn contents. “Let me show you. It’s easier.” He collected the tube and moved to the back of the truck, dropping the tailgate. Spread out on the gate, the architect’s rendering was large, fully three by four feet. I held one side as the breeze touched one corner.
“Jesus,” I breathed, and Waddell let me examine the rendering without comment. I saw not just one modest observatory, but an array of buildings dominated first by a modest radio telescope in the center of a courtyard, a telescope about the size of the units at the VLA, and then farther to the southwest, not far from the edge of the mesa, the installation of a much larger dish—I guessed it to be the California project. It dwarfed the control building, the cars, and people.
“You’ve been thinking about this for some time,” I said.
“Sure enough.”
“I had no idea.”
“The ten-cent tour.” He bent forward and guided me around the plan. “Computer center for the big guy,” and he touched the California dish. “Then over here is a theater linked to the eighty-inch housed in this dome. That’s what I call my ‘first look’ scope. Hell of a program to orient visitors to the facility and the heavens. It’s like one of those big-screen theaters you see in museums where they show the movies. Curved screen, the whole bit. But it’s a live feed from the telescope, mixed with some canned stuff. And really much, much more that that.” He looked across at me and grinned. “I mean, we might have a cloudy night some time.”
He charged on. “Now this should appeal to you.” He touched an attractive building shaped in a crescent. “Five-star restaurant. We’ll pay special attention to the green chile burritos. I’ll hire Fernando Aragon as a consultant, if I have to.” Ah, the power of money, I thought. He touched what appeared to be a glass dome on the restaurant’s roof. “Peel that back, weather permitting, and you can sip your soup and watch the heavens slide by.”
He swept his hand across two other buildings whose roofs appeared to slide apart in sections. “Four sixty-inch units, each one viewing a separate section of the heavens, image projected on giant screens in a comfy auditorium, live narrative when appropriate, and on and on.” He straightened up. “You impressed yet?”
“‘Flummoxed’ would be a better word. Why haven’t I heard about all of this?”
Waddell shrugged. “I’ve been keeping it close, Bill. I wanted to go through all the planning stages before anything went public. Once I go public, with all the permits and shit like that, there’ll be no secrets.”
“Public access?” I leaned across and touched the site of the California project.
“Ah. Probably not. That’s up to them, I suppose. They’re a bonafide research facility. Their primary target of study right now is the deep space microwave background. The fundamental stuff.”
“More fodder for conspiracies, Miles.”
He held up both hands in surrender. “I know. I know. But I don’t have time for that.”
“Is this what I think it is?” A tramway cabled its way up the steepest section of the mesa’s northwest rim, originating from a single large building and parking lot down below. “I see it, but I don’t believe it. Do you have any idea how much a funicular costs, Miles?” It was a silly question that popped out of reflex, and if I hadn’t understood before, the scope of Waddell’s problem became clear now.
“Tramway,” he corrected. “Fully enclosed cars riding on suspension cables. It’s short enough that it doesn’t need a mid-point support tower. The cable is made in Switzerland. And yes, Bill. As a matter of fact, I know exactly how much it will cost.”
I leaned close so that I could read the label for the building complex where the tram docked on top. “Resort and hotel.”
“I haven’t come up with a good name for it yet. Some folks might want to come stay here just for the desert bird-watching down below. That’s fine, too. Some of the best mountain bike trails on the continent. Horse rental. You know, the possibilities are really endless if you focus on how to attract the wide-ranging clientele. No tunnel vision.” He held up the tube and shook out another rolled document. “But I just found this…”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” The 18 by 24 photo montage showed a fetching little narrow gauge locomotive pulling four passenger cars and a flame red caboose. Smaller photos layered around the central image of the locomotive showed close-ups of the unit’s various features.
“Natural gas?”
He nodded happily. “That smoke plume is pure steam. Chuff and puff just for looks. I’ve scouted out a nifty route from Posadas around behind Prescott’s ranch, cutting across some of the most impressive arroyo country.”
“Chuff and puff,” I mused. “Nobody runs cabooses any more, you know.”
“I do. Train’s not a train without one.” My frown must have alarmed him. “I’ve thought this through, Bill. I really have.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, and peered at the logo at the corner of the blueprint. “Powers, Broyles, and Hadley…who the hell are they?”
“A bunch of kids,” he replied proudly. “Hadley’s the son of a former girlfriend of mine. Former. We parted on the best of terms, thank God. He’s the oldest of the trio, twenty-eight and smart as a whip. Broyles and Powers were classmates of his at the University of New Mexico. I wanted architects who have some imagination but who can follow directions and keep their mouths shut. Hell, they’re going to make mistakes, but that comes with the turf.” He laughed. “Hell of a first job, huh? But what’s important is that they’ll deliver what I want, not what they want. That’s the heart of their marching orders, and they understand completely.“
The breeze touched the rendering again and Waddell rolled it up neatly and stowed it in the tube. “Are you ready for the exciting part?”
Chapter Twelve
“I need you.”
“Like a goddamn hole in the head,” I scoffed. “You might need a good therapist before all of this is finished.” I brightened. “You need an old, crusty engineer to drive the train? That might appeal to me for a day or two. And by the way, Miles…I didn’t ask. Where the hell does the train go? You mentioned the Prescotts. There’s a fair list of properties between Posadas and your mesa, including theirs.”
“I’ve planned a thirty-two-mile route. A little longer than necessary to pull in a great mountain bike course that’s on a piece of property I happen to own. Another little detour to take in some scenery at the southwest end of Cat Mesa. There’s a great birding spot up there. But, seriously…”
“So you actually have all kinds of people who know a little bit about this project. You can’t talk to neighbors about railroad easements without wo
rd leaking out.”
“A few know bits and pieces.”
“And that’s all it takes. Somebody knows more about this project of yours than you think.”
“And that’s why I want you to work for me, Bill.” He held up a hand as if to ward off my incredulous response. “Let me tell you what I need, Bill. Really. I need someone who likes to cruise around the desert, looking at stuff. I need someone who drives around at night—maybe just with the light of the moon, or that little ‘perpetrator light’ you used to use behind your front bumper.”
“That was Bobby’s idea, not mine,” I said. And it was a good idea—a single tiny bulb down low between bumper and front wheel, throwing just enough light to mark the side of the path on a moonless night.
“I need someone to sit in on some planning sessions, who’ll give me his opinion when I need it, probably more often when I think I don’t. I need someone to be around, on no particular schedule, to check that when a shipment of a hundred yards of gravel is delivered, I get a hundred yards. I need someone to chat with folks on an informal basis. I need…” and he held up his hand when he saw me about to interrupt. “I need someone to talk with Frank Dayan, Bill. I want to make sure we keep him happy. He’s got a big story breaking in this week’s edition. The California folks had some neat glossies they provided, so it’ll make a splash. I want to be sure that continues with all the media, but I also want to make sure he scoops the big papers regularly.” He paused for breath. “The easiest way to keep them all happy is to advertise, advertise, advertise. When I do that, goddamn right they won’t ignore me. See? I have thought this out.”
He turned and sat on the tailgate, boots dangling a couple of inches above the dust. “There’s something else I didn’t mention.”
“Several little things,” I replied, “like a really basic little thing.” He looked puzzled. “I don’t care if your mother left you ten million bucks. That won’t pay for all of this. And when you can’t pay, you’re going to end up with a bunch of abandoned foundations and broken promises, and maybe a locomotive they’ll call Waddell’s Folly.” He looked pained. “You could run cattle on the tramway up to the mesa-top for skyline grazing, I suppose.”
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