“I always thought ‘incalculable’ meant it couldn’t be calculated, big or small, lesser or greater,” I said.
“Had Mr. Waddell spoken to you about drilling wells?” Estelle asked.
“No. He may have applied for permits, although why I don’t know. He’s got a gusher in that one well that he’s always had, just east of the new parking lot.”
“If you see him, you might ask about it,” Estelle said.
“We can call this whole project La Brea Junior,” I muttered. “Every time I turn around, I hear this great sucking sound as I’m pulled into the goddamned tar pit.” When the undersheriff didn’t respond to that, I added, “What’s the department’s interest in Waddell’s wells? Or well, as the case may be? If he has permits from the state engineer’s office, he can drill to China if he wants.”
“We have no interest in some rancher’s wells,” Estelle said quietly. “My interest is in anything that appears in print that can be construed as a threat to any legitimate project. This whole mess is too big for coincidence, Padrino. I can’t believe Mr. Todd’s letter has nothing to do, nothing in common, with the complaints and rumors we’ve heard about the mesa project. This comes right on top of Daniel’s stunt. Way too coincidental.”
“You think? Why not just a case of the public finally finding out about the project and venting their disapproval every which way they can?”
“I searched the state engineer’s website for listings of drill permits issued. Miles Waddell isn’t on the list. No one in that section of Posadas County is on the list. Not one. Nothing issued.”
“And requested?” I laughed. “Forget that one. That’s what you want me to ask him. The state knows the answer to that one, too, though.”
“A non-official request, sir. I can’t just barge onto his ranch and ask him his business.”
“I don’t know why not. Everyone else will.”
“I hope you’ll talk with him about it, Padrino. This is one instance where we really have to be proactive.”
“I’m Teflon today, sweetheart. I don’t want to get involved in anything that’s going to interfere with tonight. I agreed to this damn helicopter ride, but that’s it. What time are Addy and Carlos coming over here, by the way?”
“Mid-afternoon or so. Francisco doesn’t want any big fancy to-do, so they won’t have a lot to prepare for the reception.”
“And there’s nothing I need to do, other than leave town?”
Estelle laughed gently. “You’d have two devastated niños if you did that, Padrino. But no…there’s nothing to do. What Carlos forgets in all his excitement, Addy will remember. She’s the perfect hostess. The reception will be quiet and cozy.”
I looked across at the stove clock. “I’ll be back at home no later than two,” I said. “If you need the house for anything before then, showers, stuff like that, you have the key.”
“Sir, thank you for doing this.”
“My pleasure, and I’m not just saying that.” Although how I was actually going to enjoy a mob scene in my dark, quiet home was still up for debate.
“You’re going out to the airport now?” Estelle asked.
“Yep. Then to meet with Miles.”
“Be careful, sir.”
“You bet.” I hung up, ripped M.C. Todd’s letter from the newspaper and folded it into my battered aluminum clipboard. What did I care if some nutcase was writing letters to the editor with fabricated information? For one thing, Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman, as either law officer or damn near adopted daughter, didn’t ask for many favors. Sometimes I wished that she would. So I jumped at the chance to be of some small use.
Besides, we were in the same boat as knowing that more than a hundred years ago, some cattleman had tried to scratch out his dream somewhere along Bennett’s Trail. It’s just a compulsion to know, I had decided long ago. Sometimes the knowing brought me pleasure, sometimes I wish I’d never snooped.
Chapter Twenty-three
The Jet Ranger was appointed in corporate swank, but it was working swank, wear and tear just beginning to show around the edges. Lots of insulation helped cut the shrieking of the turbine, not like the head-splitting racket of the bare metal military Hueys I had experienced a couple of lifetimes ago.
Lynn Browning was in no hurry, and I sat patiently as she examined every square inch of the bird, then finally climbed in and did the same micro-examination on the inside. The checklist seemed to be reams. At last she picked up a headset, plugged it into the radio console and handed it to me. As soon as it settled on my ears, I heard her calm voice say, “…ive by five?” The headphones’ voice-actuated ‘on’ feature wasn’t quite fast enough to catch the first letter of what was said, but it was comfortable not to have to scream “WHAT?”
For a full five minutes we sat in place, the big, flat rotors slicing the air and a stream of Jet-A exhaust drifting up into the faultless sky. Lynn positioned a small copy of Miles Waddell’s map on her knee clipboard, on top of her aero chart.
Finally satisfied, she looked toward the FBO building as if airport manager Jim Bergin could read her lips through the windows.
“Posadas Unicom, USR Three Seven Zero One will be taxiing to the active.”
“Seven Zero One, active is currently two eight zero, winds two niner zero, gusting to five, barometer three zero six zero. Traffic is the UPS Bonanza inbound from the west here in about five minutes.”
Even as Bergin said that, and I could picture his wrinkled face cracking at his own joke about the wind ‘gusts’, the Jet Ranger went light on its toes as the rotors bit the air, and we slid across the parking area macadam, our skids maybe an inch off the ground. She took the first intersection, angled out to the runway as she scanned the sky, and then tracked west down the centerline as the nose dropped and we climbed rapidly, the airport dropping away behind us.
Seconds later, rising in seamless, velvety air, we could see the tan kidney-bean shape of Waddell’s mesa. To the south, the steel-blue highway cut the prairie, and I could see a dust cloud on one of the spurs off of County 14.
“Basically what I’m after,” Lynn said, pointing to the south as if she had seen something else, “are coordinate photos of the mesa, from just far enough away that we can capture the entire formation.” Finally I saw what she had pointed at as the sun glinted off the bright metal of a single-engine plane coming in from Lordsburg, fast and low. Almost immediately we heard the chatter on the radio as everyone announced themselves.
She answered my question without my asking. “We just need to know what’s there.”
“There are actually a couple of spots where there is access to the mesa-top from down below,” I said, and she nodded. A few moments later, Prescott’s ranch passed under our nose, and we skirted the south side of the mesa. Near the rim, I could see Waddell’s RV trailer parked, a choice spot. The rancher’s truck was gone, and the angled sun highlighted the tracks.
We stopped, the tail swinging around fast enough that part of my stomach sagged behind. When we were facing north, she used a small digital camera to snap photos from her side window, at one point actually backing up until she could frame the photo of the south-east mesa corner just the way she wanted.
“How long have you known Mr. Waddell?” the disembodied voice in the headphones asked.
“Long time.”
“Where does he actually live?”
“He’s got a nice place north of here. Ever since he started this project, he’s been spending most of his time in that little travel trailer.”
She nodded and banked the chopper sharply as we skirted west along the mesa edge, holding far enough away that she could capture her panoramas.
“This is the spot where California is setting up?” she asked.
“Approximately so. I think.”
“He told me that he’s paying some of the transportati
on costs.”
When I didn’t answer, she glanced at me. “Any idea what those are?”
“I have no idea. You’d have to ask Miles.” Then, more to be conversational than anything else, I added, “I’m sure it’s plenty.”
Where the new access highway joined the mesa rim, she hovered in close, documenting some of the fancy rockwork that kept the road sides in place.
“When he built this road, what was your understanding about the project?”
I took a moment to separate in my own mind what Miles Waddell had told me in confidence, and what was for public consumption. “I always thought he was building an observatory,” I said. “Obviously more than that.”
“But you’ve seen the architects’ rendering?”
“Sure.” I reached over and tapped the small version on her clipboard. “Just the big version of that. The whole dream, minus the train.”
We whupped up the air above the parking lot. First taking a photo to the south, she then pivoted the chopper smoothly so that she could shoot to the north, toward the construction of the new power substation. Despite it being a weekend now, five vehicles were at the site. No wood this time, I noticed. So what had the vandals accomplished? The new substation framework looked like something out of an Erector set.
“He never mentioned his budget for the next three years,” Lynn said. “From the activity I’ve seen so far…wow.” She smiled over at me, looking almost apologetic at her fishing.
“From what I know of Miles, he won’t build anything he can’t afford,” I said.
“It’s amazing to tackle something like this without partners—without an organization to fall back on.”
We made our way now east, and in the shade of a dense grove of junipers, I could see his wellhead, the well itself protected by a little concrete bunker he’d built a dozen years before with a steel-framed windmill presiding for the stock tanks.
“Just the one well?”
“As far as I know,” I said. “Have you actually sat down with Miles and gotten all the answers you need from him?”
“I plan to do that this afternoon. We have lunch planned.”
“That’s the best thing. I’m sure he’ll provide all the Dunn & Bradstreet info you need if it comes to that.”
“Sometimes a second opinion is helpful,” she said.
“I suppose so.”
“On a scale of one to ten, how optimistic are you that this project will succeed as he envisions it?”
“Me, personally?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll go for the old saw, Mrs. Browning. Miles Waddell can have anything he wants…he just may not be able to have everything he wants. I have no idea what kind of tourist traffic he can attract to pay for the operating costs. No idea.”
“He strikes me as being shrewd,” she said. “Excited but shrewd.”
“That’s a fair assessment.”
For the next forty minutes, we orbited and shot, and despite the smooth air, I began to regret not having a full breakfast—too much coffee sloshed around in an empty belly.
“I’d like an overview,” my pilot announced, and even as she spoke, the mesa fell away. We climbed as smartly as the lightly loaded Jet Ranger could manage in the thin, high-prairie air, and circled slowly, enjoying the full panorama. To the south, I could clearly see the pass through the San Cristóbals, and could count three vehicles in the twenty-six miles between the pass and Posadas to the east. As we reached 9,000 feet and turned, I could see over Cat Mesa to the north. It would be interesting to be able to pen the route Waddell was considering for his train. What did narrow gauge railroad bed now cost per mile?
Looking at the rugged mesa and all the arroyos and gorges cut in its flanks, I thought that a railroad that looped around Cat Mesa would be spectacular, the tracks heading out of Posadas to the east and north, reappearing around the west end of the mesa. Fifty miles of track, maybe. Mere pocket change. Wonderfully empty country, it all was. In the entire panorama to the north, I could see a single billow of dust from a vehicle northbound off of State 78, following what would become one of the jarring Forest Service roads near the west end of the mesa. A woodcutter, perhaps. Or Johnny Boyd taking the rough route home.
“Is there anything else you might like to see?” Lynn asked. “And by the way, I’ll be happy to send you a packet of the best of the best.”
“I’d appreciate that. And I’ll buy breakfast, if we’re headed back.”
She had seen my yawns, a sure sign that a flight passenger would rather be elsewhere.
“Thanks for that,” she said. “But I think I’ll go back to the motel room and print some of these out before I meet with Mr. Waddell.” She banked gently for one more mesa view. “What a spot,” she said. “What an incredible spot.”
“You know, I predict what’s going to appeal to the county commission about this whole thing. Nothing shows to the casual passerby. No excavation, no nothing. From down on the highway, you won’t be able to see a damn thing. There’s one spot, if you know just where to look, that you’ll be able to see the top portion of the California dish. That’s it. No neon, no noise, no intrusion.”
“That works both ways, though. Unless he has some careful signage, something to announce the location, he won’t attract the casual tourist…the folks for whom the mesa isn’t a planned destination.”
“When this is up and running, there will be so much publicity in the media, I don’t think that will be a problem,” I said. More likely, just the opposite, I thought. Hopefully, Miles Waddell’s NightZone wouldn’t become a Pandora’s Box.
Chapter Twenty-four
My favorite back corner of the Don Juan de Oñate was as dark as the New Mexico prairie had been blinding. In retrospect, I thought that Lynn Browning had kept her curiosity pretty well in check. If I’d been willing to blab, she’d have listened and maybe even encouraged. When I made it clear that I wasn’t going to offer up gratuitous information behind my friend’s back, she hadn’t persisted. If that had been the reason for her inviting me along, I’d turned out to be a boring passenger.
I had taken two scrumptious bites when my little cell phone vibrated, and I dropped my fork in the process of trying to fish the damn phone out of my pocket.
“Gastner,” I managed around the green chile soaked egg and onion and sausage and mushrooms and Fernando Aragon only knew what else.
“Where are you?” Bob Torrez’s usual quiet voice sounded loud in the quiet restaurant. For a moment I could imagine that by ducking inside the restaurant, I had escaped the eye of his pilotless drone.
“Eating a green chile burrito that won’t wait for anybody or anything,” I said. “And this is the second time in a couple of days that you’ve asked me where the hell I am. I’m on a short leash now, or what?”
The sheriff almost chuckled, a little huff of amusement. “Just checkin’.” This from a man who didn’t care an iota where people were, or what they were doing or saying—unless they crossed into his turf.
“Did you talk with Estelle this morning?”
“Yep. How was the flight?”
“Spectacular. What’s up?”
“I just finished talking to Art Shaum out at Chavez.” Shaum was the new service manager at the Chavez Chevrolet dealership, a hardwired young man who would spend his Saturday at the dealership even though the service department was closed for the weekend. My bet was that he’d end up owning the place within a year. “He’s missing a vehicle.”
“I didn’t take it.” I waited patiently, since the sheriff had more on his mind than a stolen car or truck.
“The electric company had one of their older units at the dealership for front end work. F-450 utility body, stretch cab, four by four diesel. White, with fleet number 1214 on the front fender. Gone this morning.” He rattled off the tag and repeated the fleet number.
/> “It wasn’t locked up?”
“Just in that little paddock deal by the service entrance. Key was hanging in Shaum’s office.”
“And it still is?”
“Yep.”
“So what are you thinking, Sheriff.”
After a brief pause, Torrez said, “I’m thinkin’ that I don’t like coincidence. This Daniel guy is switchin’ vehicles left and right. And now this…”
“Bobby, get a grip. Who is going to want a flapped-out Electric Coop truck? Behemoth like that probably won’t break fifty miles an hour.”
“Depends on what he plans to do with it,” the sheriff said.
“Like what, do you imagine?”
“I can think of all kinds of things.”
“Name one.”
“Who bothers to give a second look at an electric company truck out near a construction site?”
“Well, for one thing, the electric company might. They’ve got all kinds of people out here who would recognize it in a heartbeat.”
“Plus,” the sheriff pointed out, “he’s got his bike with him. He used the dealership’s utility ramp and wasn’t too careful about leavin’ tracks.”
I took a moment to digest that. The sheriff was not imagining things if a motorcycle was involved. “Why would he stay around?” I said, more to myself than the sheriff.
“’Cause he thinks he’s got a target,” Torrez said. “They finished up tossing his apartment in Cruces. Interesting hobby he had. It looks like he had just about every movie or book about the French Resistance ever made.”
“The French resistance? Like in World War II?”
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