Days of Atonement

by Walter Jon Williams

  Luis Figueracion took his job as patrón seriously. He spent his days dressed in baggy slacks and flannel shirt in a dusty old storefront office with creaking floorboards and flyspecked windows, and there he peered through his thick spectacles as he listened to complaints, settled disputes, and dealt out unofficial justice with the confident and undisputed authority of a Mafia chieftain. It was a job that ran in his family, and he did it well and with pride.

  During the late eighteenth century the Figueracions had stolen title to a land grant in northern New Mexico, a theft achieved partly through adroit manipulation of colonial politics in Mexico City, partly through a bunch of Figueracions physically occupying the grant along with their families, their crossbows, and their guns. The land had remained theirs for several generations, only to be stolen again in the 1870s by the Catron Ring, which had a conclusive superiority in firepower and owned the local military commanders and the Republican judges, those being the only kind the state possessed. The title ended up by the end of the twentieth century in the hands of Mormon land developers from Utah, who cleared off indigenous sheepherders by running over their flocks with bulldozers and were now building vacation condominiums and blighting the environment as fast as their ever-expanding credit would permit.

  The dispossessed Figueracions— those the Catron Ring left alive, anyway— poisoned the water sources on their old land in a final act of spite and went into the freighting business in Atocha County, their ox-drawn wagons bringing overpriced salt, flour, and mining equipment to prospectors, returning with two-hundred-pound crudely cast ingots of gold and silver. They also ran cattle over most of the county and bought protection from the Apaches by selling them antique, rusting, dangerous firearms and third-rate gunpowder, which had the multiple beneficent effect of making the Indians happy, militarily less effective than if they’d stuck to bows and arrows, and dependent on Figueracion commerce.

  When the silver boom ended and Riga Brothers came looking for copper, they found the burned timbers of the abandoned Mexican diggings on the Figueracion Ranch. The Figueracions were happy to give them the surface rights to the Atocha pit in return for a political understanding: Riga Brothers ran the mine, the Figueracions ran everything else.

  Now Riga Brothers was gone, and a Republican sat in City Hall. Luis considered the latter a greater threat.

  “I’m gonna smash that son of a bitch!” he said. He drove his cigarette into the ashtray as if it were a stake into Edward Trujillo’s heart. “Next mayoral election, this damn town’s gonna be wallpapered with our posters! And no laid-off miner is gonna have any reason to love Edward Trujillo!”

  “Trujillo’s tight with ATL,” Loren said.

  Luis put a liver-spotted finger by his nose. “Most of them guys don’t vote in Atocha. Trujillo’ll be outflanked. He thinks he’s the only man who can talk to company presidents? Shit, I can call up the president of Riga Brothers any day I want! And I dealt with a lot of ATL guys when they bought my land to put their plant on.”

  “It’s not a plant,” Loren said. “It doesn’t manufacture anything.”

  Luis waved a dismissive hand. “No difference.”

  “There is. There’s no one there to talk to. The guys who bought your land, they’re off doing other things now, making acquisitions elsewhere probably. There’s no one person that sets company policy— it’s all this free-form information-age networking stuff. All they produce is knowledge, and they’re a consortium, owned by other companies that have nothing to do with us.”

  “Crap. There’s always someone to deal with.”

  “The only people who interact with our town are P.R. people, Luis. They don’t want to help us out; they just want people to think they’re helping us out. They’d just as soon we all went away.”

  “They’ll deal. Everybody always deals.” Luis stuck his nose in the air like FDR and smiled. “I got my irons in the fire. I’m not worried.”

  Loren looked at him. “I wish you were, Luis.”

  “Everyone deals. And Figueracion delivers. That’s the rule here, and everybody knows it.”

  Loren felt his heart give a little tug. Trujillo had outmaneuvered Luis twice now, and all Luis did was sit in his office and wait for people to come to him. His power came from the people in the county who acknowledged his leadership, and those people were fewer every year. When the pit shut down, so did a lot of Luis’s power base— all he had left was the prestige he had from being the largest rancher in the territory. And half the people who worked at ATL probably didn’t eat red meat, anyway.

  “You heard about this guy Axelrod?” Loren said.

  “He and I done business once or twice.”

  Loren paused for a moment, then decided he didn’t want to know. “He’s defending Archuleta and Medina, the two drugrunners I popped the other day. And he’s defending Robbie Cisneros, too.”

  “He’ll lose.” Luis seemed unconcerned.

  “But he’s gonna make us look bad. That’s his only hope of winning.”

  A shrug. “What can he do?”

  “First, he’s going to challenge the warrant I got. It was an anonymous call, and he’s going to try to prove it was me who made it.“ He cleared his throat. “Me or one of my men. And then . . .”

  “Denver’s the judge who gave you the warrant, right?” Luis squinted at him. “Fair and square, right?”

  “Then he’s gonna try to prove police brutality, because Robbie tried to escape and I had to hit him a few times.”

  “You hit him a few times.” Luis repeated. He frowned. “Was it one of them escapes, Loren? I don’t know how many times I’ve warned you about your temper.”

  Guilt raised hairs on the back of Loren’s neck. He smoothed them back down and gave a deliberately weary sigh. “It doesn’t fucking matter, Luis. The point is that he’d got some investigator wandering around town letting people think he’s a fed, and if he ever gets around to passing out money, he’ll get all the witnesses he needs.”

  Luis tapped thoughtful fingers on his little potbelly. “I dunno, Loren. People in this town are loyal to their own.”

  Loren figured he knew exactly how far to trust this statement. “All it takes is one rotten apple. And you know the Cisneros family.”

  Luis scratched his chin and said nothing. Loren kept talking.

  “He’s gonna try to smear the police, Luis. That’s the only way he can win this case. And Medina and Archuleta are connected down in Mexico; he’s gonna do everything he can to get those boys off.”

  “You think so. Man, I got all the judges their jobs. You think they’re gonna listen for a minute to any of this shit?”

  “Cases can be appealed. But think for a minute. You want some kind of reform movement started about the police and sheriff’s department? That’s half the patronage you have left.”

  Luis’s calm face, over a period of several seconds, turned slowly to stone. “You got a point, Loren. I’ll put the word out.”

  “Put the word out now. Before somebody does something stupid.”

  “I’ll send it out with the mail tomorrow.”

  Loren’s nerves tingled. He smoothed his nape hair down again. “About that mail, Luis.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t think the mail should go out to the police tomorrow.”

  Luis cocked his glasses back on his long nose as if to study Loren more carefully. “Why d’you say that?”

  “This investigator. He doesn’t know anything about our life here. All he’s looking for is dirt. And if he finds out the mail goes from your office to police headquarters every Wednesday . . .”

  “I’ll work out some other way.”

  “There’s no other way that’s safe. Other than to hold up the mail.”

  Luis’s face twitched. “That’s not how this county works. I do favors for people, other people do me favors. You do favors, I do favors, everybody does favors for everybody. And the mail goes through.”

  “You want to lose tha
t last piece of patronage, Luis? That Axelrod is smart.”

  “Neither snow or sleet,” said Luis in a singsong, “or gloom of night, shall keep the whatever-the-hell, the mail anyway, from going through.” There was a goofy smile on his face.

  “Just hold up the mail till after the trial, okay?”

  “What are your boys gonna say about it?”

  “I figure they’ll work out the reasons for themselves. It’s in their interest to understand. And it’s not like it’s anything but pocket change these days.”

  Luis scowled. “You think you’re not getting enough, ése?”

  “I didn’t say that, Luis.”

  “This is how it works! Everybody gets his piece of the action and everybody gets to keep his job!” His voice turned to a roar, and he thumped a fist on his desk.

  “I’m not complaining, Luis.” Loren waved his hands.

  “My job is making people happy, God damn it!”

  “Will you listen to me?” Loren could feel his blood turning to steam. “I’m just saying that I don’t want anything going on when that son of a bitch Axelrod is poking around!”

  “Who got you your job, Loren?” Luis’s face was purple. “Answer me that!”

  “You did!” Loren shouted.

  “I been sending you the mail for twenty years, and you say you’re not grateful!”

  Loren raised both fists, slammed them down on Luis’s desk. “I’m grateful as shit!”

  “You fucking well better be!” Luis put a hand over his heart. He fell silent and gasped for breath. His hair stuck out like a scarecrow’s. Jesus Christ, Loren thought, he’s gonna have a heart attack and die right here.

  “I’m just asking you to hold up the mail,” Loren said. He tried to keep his voice down but he knew he was still louder than he wanted to be. “That’s all. Who the hell gets hurt?”

  Luis shook his head, still gasping. “Not how it works, ése.”

  “Too many people know about the mail. Maybe Axelrod knows already, maybe he deals with the people who supply Connie Duvauchelle her girls.”

  “Connie’s been around. Connie knows what’s what.”

  “She offered me cash this morning. Right in her office. For all I know there was a wire in there.”

  Luis’s face did that slow transformation again, angry red-faced geezer to stone statue. “That’s interesting,” he said.

  “There could be some guy in a car outside this office, listening to us with a rifle mic. Or maybe he’s bouncing a laser off your storefront window so he can listen to the backscatter and find out where the mail’s going.”

  Luis’s eyes flickered. He didn’t look out the window. “Is that possible?”

  “Hell, yes. That’s why I want to hold up the mail.”

  Luis gave a nod. Dead Democrats approved his sentiments from the wall behind him. “Okay. But you explain it to your people, okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “And otherwise nothing’s changed.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Join me for lunch?”

  Loren rose from his chair. “I got a murderer to catch.”

  A smile twitched across Luis’s face. “Go get ’em, killer.”

  “Yeah.”

  Loren stepped from the office and blinked in the sunshine. The hot wind tore at his hair. He put his shades on and somehow was reluctant to get in the car and drive off. Thinking about it now, he couldn’t tell how serious he’d been about the laser mic, whether it was a fantasy he used to snow Luis or whether he was really as paranoid as he wanted Luis to believe.

  He thought about how John Doe’s body had disappeared. If that wasn’t reason enough for paranoia . . .

  He looked across the street, saw no mysterious operatives in dark sedans. He glanced up at the power poles, saw no apparatus that shouldn’t have been there.

  He thought about Connie Duvauchelle offering him money in her office and his nerves sang a little warning. Best to be cautious.

  Had he really gone to Pastor Rickey the night before babbling about miracles? If anyone found out about it, he was in a world of shit. That had been a perfectly crazy thing to do.

  So, he concluded, was standing here in the blowing dust. He got in the Fury and drove to the Sunshine for lunch.

  He checked his rearview mirror every few seconds. When the ATL jeep pulled out of a side street and began to follow, there was a part of his mind that wasn’t surprised.

  *

  There was a shiny rented pickup truck parked in front of the Sunshine with a dead elk in it. The man who had shot it was inside drinking Coover’s greasy coffee. He wasn’t dressed like a hunter— he even wore a knit tie beneath his L.L. Bean goose-down vest. He had paid twelve thousand bucks for the privilege of walking into a stock pen, raising a state-of-the-art Perugini-Visini nylon-stocked hunting rifle with a hunter-killer laser sight featuring IR and night-enhancement options, and there shooting an elderly, tame elk at point-blank range, all for the purpose of using the head and rack of horns to impress the hell out of his golfing buddies.

  At least, unlike the Chinese and Koreans, he probably didn’t intend to eat the horns and drink the blood.

  The sight of this distinguished sportsman did not put Loren in a good mood. More annoying were Bob Sandoval and Mark Byrne, who rolled their eyes at each other and winked broadly while they jabbered witlessly about anonymous calls and pretended to pass drug money back and forth under the counter. Loren told them and Coover that the investigator that had approached them yesterday worked for a syndicate lawyer who was out to hang every cop in Atocha County and that anyone who talked to him had better find a new place to live. Then he ate his burger and left.

  A five-ton truck filled with velvet elk antlers was maneuvering into a parking space across the street. Two Asian men were inside. As they got out, Loren saw that the white shirt of one was stained with blood.

  The ATL jeep was parked on West Plaza. Ray-Bans followed him past the deco griffins into the City-County Building.

  Eloy was on the phone as Loren boomed through the glass doors; he waved frantically as Loren approached him and put his call on hold. He held out a thick wad of message slips.

  “Lots of calls for you, Chief. Cantwell, Castrejon, Lowrey, Axelrod.”

  “Axelrod?” Loren flipped through message slips written on coarse recycled paper. “What’s the shyster want?”

  Eloy gave him a dubious look. “He probably wants to complain about the missing page in the logbook.”

  Loren almost grinned but caught himself in time. “What missing page is that?” Feigning casualness, flipping through his messages.

  “He sent one of his investigators here to subpoena our records about that anonymous tip.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “I gave him the logbook, left the desk, and went to the toilet,” Eloy said. “When I got back, the guy said the page had been torn out.”

  Loren looked at him over the message slips. “You think he tore it out himself?”

  Eloy tilted his torso back to smile at Loren over his neck brace. “I was on the shitter, of course. But I think a case can be made.”

  “Good.”

  “I missed the page yesterday. That’s why I went to the can when I did, so I couldn’t say whether he took it or not.”

  Loren looked at Eloy, impressed. Maybe the man’s brains weren’t scrambled, after all. “Very good,” he said. “Any call from the OMI?”

  “Nada. You got any idea why someone would take our stiff?”

  None he wanted to speak out loud, anyway. “Beats me, ese,” he said.

  The phone rang. Eloy gestured for Loren to remain, answered the line, put the caller on hold.

  “They’ve been calling all morning. John Doe ended up on the Child Support Net.”

  “Why?” Loren was surprised.

  “Lots of guys have run off and left their wives and kids in the lurch. If Doe’s their boy, maybe they can get insurance or more public assistance or something.” />
  “Jesus. I hadn’t thought about that.” A vision flashed before his eyes, tens of thousands of hard-bitten women in faded maternity clothes, snot-nosed kids in striped T-shirts that didn’t quite cover their navels, all sitting in fleabag apartments or tin-walled house trailers, praying for Daddy’s death.

  “Any luck?” Loren asked.

  “Not really. Anyway, I wanted to tell you—Lowrey really wants to talk to you.”

  “I’ll call her right back.”

  “She’s out running. Wait till after one.”

  “There was something I needed to tell you.” Loren cleared his throat, suddenly uncomfortable. “The Wednesday mail— it isn’t coming tomorrow.”

  Eloy blinked. “It got delayed or something?”

  “No. It’s gonna be held up until Axelrod and his investigator stop poking around.”

  “Oh.” Eloy seemed to want to know what to think about this.

  “We don’t want them knowing about it. They’d hang us up by our balls.”

  Eloy’s eyes flickered. “Okay.”

  “The mail’s just being held at the post office. You’ll get all your letters.”

  “Okay.”

  “What I need is for you to tell everybody going on swing shift, then all the guys coming off shift.”

  “Okay.”

  Loren had about had it with this passive response, this long chorus of “okays.”

  “It’s not my fault, God damn it!” he said. “Blame the shyster, not me!”

  Eloy tilted his braced body back in his chair and looked at him. “I got some divorced ladies on hold, Chief.”

  “Right.”

  Loren moved down to his office. A lousy fifteen bucks, he thought. That’s what Eloy’s take amounts to. What, he couldn’t live without it for a while? At least he had a job. In this town, that was something.

  The anger faded as soon as Loren entered his office. Guilt began to throb in his temples. If he hadn’t beat up Robbie Cisneros, Eloy wouldn’t have had to cover for him, and Axelrod wouldn’t have any ammunition to use on him.

  Still. It wasn’t as if Robbie didn’t deserve it.