Into Thin Air

by Thomas Zigal

  What are you doing, you dumb son of a bitch? he thought. Still acting like somebody with a badge? You don’t even have a weapon.

  When he rounded the corner at the Esprit shop he knocked down an elderly man videotaping his wife as she passed by in a horse-drawn stagecoach. Kurt picked him up, brushed off his backside, and apologized. The old gentleman showed more concern for his camera.

  “Hey, Fagan!” Kurt called out to the coach driver, a weathered local wearing leather chaps and a sweat-stained Stetson. “You see somebody running?”

  “Mexican?” Fagan mumbled through his drooping mustache.

  Kurt shrugged.

  “Pool hall,” Fagan nodded.

  Kurt jogged across the street and stopped at the door that led downstairs into the pool hall. He took a deep breath and tried to compose himself. He was very angry and very scared and his legs were shaking. He gave a second thought to finding a phone and calling the city police, but that would take too much time.

  The place was crowded with young Hispanic men, as it had been every night these past few years, since the flood of migrant workers. Kurt had always liked the old cellar. When he came home from the army this was where he hung out, drinking hard, shooting pool all afternoon with Bert and Zack, a peculiar restful silence between them, not another soul at the tables.

  He walked casually to the bar, where Thurman Fisher was arguing with two stool customers about a baseball game on the overhead TV set. A tall, potbellied man with wire-rim glasses and a salt-and-pepper beard, Thurman had owned this pool hall for almost thirty years, this and a small corner grocery store he’d sold off when the new supermarket stole all of his business. Kurt had gone to school with his daughter and was there when she’d drowned in a kayak accident on the Colorado.

  Thurman lifted a glass from a long gleaming row and set it on the bar near Kurt’s sleeve. “Braves are ahead seven-three,” he said. “Draft all right?”

  Kurt rested against the walnut casing and eyed the pool shooters, more than a dozen of them. “A Mexican just ran in here,” he said. The place had grown quiet the moment he’d stepped down the stairs. “Which one was it?”

  “Been following the game,” Thurman said.

  Every face had turned to study Kurt. Short, dark, tattooed men wearing sleeveless shirts, their arms thick from fieldwork.

  “The guy’s carrying a gun, Thurman,” Kurt said. “He tried to kill me.”

  Thurman placed both hands on the bartop and looked out at the players. “Lord,” he said calmly. “You sure he came in here?”

  “Somebody saw him.”

  Thurman was good to these people. He let them shoot for free before the paying customers arrived for the evening.

  Kurt leaned over. “I don’t have a weapon, Thurman,” he said in a quiet voice.

  “You want me to call for some backup?”

  “No,” Kurt said, “there’s no time. You’re going to be my backup.”

  He pushed off from the bar and walked directly toward the tables. At the first one a surly young vato with a scrawny mustache and goatee pulled away from the cue ball and straightened himself, waiting. His partners stared at Kurt, their eyes narrowed in hatred. He knew what they were thinking. This pendejo blew away our friends. Kurt passed each one slowly, cautiously, looking them over to see who was breathing hard from a run. An older, barrel-chested man with his shirt tail hanging free, sleeves rolled back, the shirt unbuttoned and open wide, stood powdering his stick, the up-and-down motion of his hand an obscene gesture of contempt. Kurt stopped in front of him to read the words Más Mota on his T-shirt.

  “Did somebody here want to say something to me?” Kurt asked loudly.

  He could hear the rustle of shoes behind him and turned to face down three youths who’d moved in close, their pool cues gripped like sabers.

  “Well?” Kurt said. “One of you boys want another shot at me?”

  He was surrounded now, a dozen bodies edging toward him. He glanced over at Thurman. He knew the old fellow kept a .38 Special under the bar right where he was standing.

  “What you want from us?” said the older man powdering his stick. His face was pitted from an ancient bout with acne. “We don’ make no trouble.”

  “I want the guy who just tried to kill me,” Kurt said. “You got any idea who that might be?”

  The man shrugged. “Some crazy Colombian,” he said.

  His companions laughed.

  Kurt waited. He could see this was going to take more persuasion. “I’m looking for Angel Montoya,” he said.

  The man shrugged again. “Never heard this name,” he said.

  His companions mumbled. No one here had ever heard of Angel Montoya.

  “His brother was killed in Emma today. And two of his friends. I want to know why.”

  One of the players said something in Spanish. The young vato with the goatee spat on the floor.

  Kurt took a step toward him. “How ’bout you, hotshot?” he said. “There something you want to tell me?”

  The young man didn’t flinch. His butt was braced against the table’s cushion, his hands wrapped around the slender neck of the cue.

  “I’m listening,” Kurt said.

  Bodies shifted again, moved in tight. He was beginning to feel crowded. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Thurman slip the .38 onto the bar.

  “Your name Montoya?” he asked the young man.

  Footsteps rumbled down the stairwell and two uniformed Aspen policemen hurried into the bar, their hands secured over their holsters. Kurt knew them both, a rookie from Durango and a guy named Magnuson who sometimes joined the poker group.

  “Any trouble in here?” Magnuson asked Thurman Fisher. “We got a report some guy’s running around the streets with a gun.”

  Then he noticed Kurt. “Muller!” he said. “What’s going on?”

  The pool shooters had backed off as soon as they saw the uniforms. But not the guy with the goatee. He held his ground, the long slender cue locked in his hand.

  “Just shooting a little stick with the boys,” Kurt said.

  He snatched the cue from the young man and bent over the table. “What’s going on with you, Mike?”

  “Some fucker’s out scaring the tourists tonight. Knocked down an old man in the street.”

  “If I see him,” Kurt said, popping the five ball in a corner pocket, “I’ll tell him to turn himself in.”

  Magnuson laughed. “What a fucking town!” he said. “It’s still like Dodge City around here sometimes.”

  He and the rookie sat down at the bar and ordered Cokes. Soon they were arguing with Thurman Fisher about the pennant standings.

  Kurt dropped another ball with a nice soft touch and handed the stick back to the vato. “Tell Angel Montoya I want to talk to him,” he said in a quiet voice. “Tell him I know who killed his brother.”

  Chapter ten

  The next morning, after taking Lennon to day care, Kurt drove to the Hickory House for breakfast. In his youth the log café had been a locals’ favorite because of its mom-and-pop friendliness and truck-stop menu. Those were the years when men rose early to cut wood and a handful of miners still worked the old shafts. But now the café catered to budget skiers lodging in this low-rent side of town, and to a dwindling number of old-timers who still preferred their toast white, their yolks running into the hash browns.

  Kurt picked up a copy of the Aspen Daily News outside the door and requested the darkest corner of the smoking section. The Hickory House was the only restaurant in town that still tolerated smokers, but he knew the section would be empty.

  The newspaper skewered him. A self-righteous intern reporter from some Ivy League school had been critical of the sheriff’s office for an entire year now, and he really went after Kurt on this one. ‘Uncooperative with FBI agents, who eventually broke the murder case on their own.’ ‘Apparently unaware of a major drug-trafficking operation in Pitkin County.’ By the time Kurt came to ‘a question of bad judgment i
n the handling of the escape attempt, which resulted in the death of Deputy Chip Bodine’ and ‘possible impropriety with regard to a missing witness in the homicide investigation,’ he was ready to shove the little bastard’s nose in his omelette.

  “You don’t look too happy this morning.”

  Muffin sat down at his table. He hated the idea that she knew where to find him.

  “It puts me in a nasty humor,” Kurt said, “to learn from a newspaper that my professional conduct is in question.”

  Muffin looked as though she hadn’t slept all night. Dark rings surrounded her eyes—a glimpse of her in five years, when the job would finally rob her of her tomboy charm.

  “I don’t know where that little prick got his information,” she said. “When he talked to me I told him you’ve always been squeaky clean, and that I know you did your best.”

  Kurt folded the newspaper and dropped it in an empty chair. “You make me feel so appreciated,” he said.

  He knew that Muffin’s flashpoint lay just below the skin. This morning she seemed capable of biting through her lip.

  “They want an internal investigation,” she said, removing her sheriff’s department cap and shaking out her thick brown hair. “I’m getting a lot of pressure, Kurt. It isn’t my idea.”

  “The commissioners?”

  “The commissioners, the mayor, the Tourist Bureau.” She let out a deep breath, picked up his cup, sipped coffee. “And Neal Staggs.”

  Kurt pushed aside the plate. “What does Staggs want?” he asked, hearing the resentment in his voice.

  “It’s hard to say. I know he’s glad you’re out,” she said. “He’s making noises he might be mounting his own criminal investigation of your terms in office.”

  Kurt laughed darkly. “Let the bastard dig through my sock drawer. I don’t have anything to hide.”

  Muffin rocked back on the chair’s hind legs and cocked a cowboy boot over her knee. “I’ve been doing some more calling around on the Rojas case,” she said, her eyes avoiding Kurt’s. “I found out her husband is an attorney, and that he’s been in San Francisco for some kind of political conference.”

  Kurt could see that she was uneasy about what she was going to say. But determined nonetheless.

  “Last night I finally got in touch with one of his associates at the conference,” she said. “He told me that Rojas checked out early, without saying good-bye.”

  She raised her eyes and looked at Kurt. “He thought the man might be joining his wife in Colorado.”

  Kurt made a steeple of his fingers and brought them slowly to his lips.

  “Kurt,” Muffin said, “there are some things here you’re gonna have to face.”

  “You know, Brown,” he said calmly, “I’m curious how you and your new friend Neal Staggs are working this one out together. He thinks Omar Quiroga was killed by Mexican drug traffickers, and you think he was killed by Graciela—and her husband. So tell me, dear. Who is it I’m working for? A bunch of fry cooks from Chihuahua, or a doctor-and-lawyer assassin squad from Argentina?”

  Muffin’s face colored. “I don’t believe that crap about the wetbacks any more than you do.”

  Kurt chewed at a piece of brittle toast. “Somebody tried to kill me last night,” he said. “My guess is it was some pissed-off young fool who heard that men wearing badges shot up his brother. And now he figures it’s payback time. Better watch your backside today, Officer.”

  “Telephone!” Doris the cashier, a middle-aged woman with bad teeth and the rough features of a ranch wife, signaled from the register. “It’s your dispatcher.”

  Kurt and Muffin both slid back their chairs. They looked at each other, and Kurt almost smiled. “Sorry,” he said. “Go ahead.”

  In a few moments Muffin returned to the table. “Come take a ride with me,” she said. “They’ve found something up near Weller Lake.”

  A mile downstream from the Grottos, two mountain bikers had stopped to soak their feet and saw the twist of clothing on the sandy embankment under a footbridge. They probed at the bundle with a stick, and when they discovered the blood, one of them bicycled into town to inform the sheriff’s department.

  Kurt recognized the Guatemalan sweater. Mud-dried, ripped at the shoulder seam, a long smear of dark blood down the front.

  “It’s hers,” he said.

  Muffin refused to look at him. She left the sweater where it lay and crouched down, searching the shadows beneath the bridge.

  Kurt knew now that there was no hope of finding her alive. And no one was to blame but himself.

  “You ought to get some men up here to cover the area,” he said.

  “The sweater’s dry,” Muffin said. “It hasn’t been in the water since yesterday afternoon.”

  Kurt began to wander downstream, his eyes fixed on the gushing snowmelt waters of the Roaring Fork River. He was willing to walk fifty miles over broken stone to find her body.

  “Look where it is, Kurt!” Muffin called after him. “The river didn’t wash it up. Somebody wanted us to find this thing.”

  He turned and shouted back at her. “Do your job, Brown!” he said. “Get some people up here to help comb the area.”

  “Where are you going?” she yelled.

  He followed the river, the white rushing stream so loud no human voice could distract him now. Water crashed around sand-colored boulders, eddied quickly, and flowed on. There was an occasional branch to watch, its swift projectile movement the only true measure of the current, how everything was displaced moment after moment and then gone. When he finally realized how far he’d walked, and how much time had lapsed, he sat down on a smooth flat shelf of rock near the riverbank and tried to collect his thoughts. He felt tired. He hadn’t slept much these past few nights, and now, in the aftershock of the bloody sweater, his body ached for rest.

  He found himself thinking about Meg, about a particular black Mexican shawl she had worn over her bare shoulders one summer evening when they’d first met, nearly twenty years ago. He had a photograph of them sitting together in a booth at the Red Onion, her long wavy auburn hair falling across the dark shawl.

  Graciela was right, he thought. It was tragic how old loves vanished from your life. You always believed you would see them again, in some distant city, on the street perhaps, a chance encounter, and forgive one another, embrace, and move on.

  When Meg left Lennon at Kurt’s office that morning and then disappeared, it was not cruelty, he knew, but an act of desperation. He knew, without a word exchanged, that something awful had happened in her life to make her give up the little boy she loved so much. He had lost her years ago, in the slow erosion of their love, and now Lennon had lost her too. The world was fast becoming a vague and troublesome place adrift with missing souls.

  Kurt had no idea how long he’d been sitting there, mesmerized by the water. He stood up and dusted off the seat of his pants. There was little chance of stumbling upon her body in this vast wilderness; the search was more than one man could undertake. If the river had her, it would give her up in its own sweet time.

  Defeated, he made his way back upriver, following a trail through the tall firs. As he reached sight of the footbridge he noticed a huddle of cops off in the brush, about thirty yards from the water. Three uniformed deputies were circled around something on the ground. Muffin was talking to a man in a gray suit. When Kurt drew closer he realized that the man was Neal Staggs.

  “Kurt!” Muffin said, breaking from the group. She looked worried. “Where the hell have you been? We found your jacket.”

  Wearing surgical gloves, a deputy named Dave Stuber knelt over a dark bulky mass, trying to scoot it into a large garbage bag. It was Kurt’s brown leather jacket, crusty and stiff as a run-over dog on a country road.

  “My my,” Kurt said. “Somebody must be planting an entire wardrobe out here.”

  Staggs was regarding him with that familiar sneer, the same one Kurt had seen through a swirl of helicopter dust out on H
ighway 82. He clenched his fists so hard his thumbnails throbbed.

  “Come over here,” Muffin said, taking his arm. “I need to talk to you.”

  “What the hell is he doing here?”

  “Come on,” she ordered, maneuvering him away from the cops.

  When they were near the bridge she said, “Keep walking, Kurt. Go on home. I’ll call you in a couple of hours.”

  “Did you radio that son of a bitch?”

  “He’s got a stake in this thing, Kurt. What’s happened to the Argentines is turning into a major diplomacy problem.”

  Kurt looked over her head at Staggs. “Don’t trust that reptile,” he said. “He’s got his own agenda.”

  “Staggs wants you pulled in for questioning on the Rojas disappearance,” Muffin said. “He’s not buying your story about what happened at the Grottos.”

  “Tell him to go fuck himself,” he said loud enough for the agent to hear.

  “He wants me to bring you in for a peaceful low-intensity interrogation. You know the line,” she said with a cynical lift to the eyebrow. “‘In the spirit of cooperation between law-enforcement colleagues.’”

  “They’re getting desperate.”

  “He wants it to happen today,” she said.

  Kurt thought about walking over and popping Staggs in the face. “What if I say no?”

  “Don’t do that to me, Kurt.”

  Staggs was watching them, hands in his pants pockets, a spiteful, vindictive man whose career depended on a personal affinity for quick judgment and condemnation. The kind of man Kurt had come to know and despise in the army.

  “Just tell me one thing, Muffin.” He paused to study her vexed face. “What do you believe? That Graciela’s sitting in a hot tub somewhere, sipping a nice umbrella drink with her husband?”

  Her face revealed nothing. “Go on home and wait for my call,” she said. A hint of the intimacy that had once passed between them surfaced in her voice. “This thing here may take a while, and I don’t want you two anywhere near each other.”

  “You don’t have to become one of the suits, Muffin.”

  “Go on,” she said, giving him a push. “I’ll call.”