“What’s going on?”
“Henry, you know they don’t tell me, and I don’t ask ’em. They tell me what to do, and I do it. And if I need some help from you, I tell you what I need. That’s how we make a living.”
“Who is that arrogant son of a bitch? I see him as a very important loan officer in a very lofty bank and he’s overseeing an export-import business that wouldn’t have Customs Service approval.”
“I don’t know, and you don’t want to know. All I know is he doesn’t want Customs cops messing around out there around the Brockman Hills. He wants you to make sure they won’t.”
“I told him I didn’t send anyone out there.”
“You need to get hold of that woman Customs Officer and find out what the hell she was doing, and get those pictures to me. Get ’em to the bank in Juarez and leave them in our safety deposit box. He also wants a picture of that woman cop.”
Henry held the telephone away from his ear and rubbed his forehead. “Hey,” the voice was saying. “Hey. You there.”
“Yeah,” Henry said.
“You hear what I said.”
“Yes,” Henry said. “I heard you.”
10
Customs Officer Bernadette Manuelito was driving west on Inte7rstate Highway 10, heading toward the intersection with State Road 146, when her telephone beeper distracted her. She intended to take 146 south to the village of Hatchita, where 146, for no reason she could discern, became State Road 81, and stay on 81 until it met the Mexican border. Judging from her map, she could see it simply ended there. Bernie’s goal was to continue following Supervisor Henry’s instructions.
“First thing to do is get acquainted with the boot heel section of New Mexico,” Henry had said. “And while you’re doing that, see if you’re smart enough to find the Hoe-ches Highway.”
That was the Border Patrol’s jocular title for the footpaths used by illegals in filtering across from Mexico, and all Henry told her about it was that it was somewhere between San Luis Pass in the Aninias Mountains and the Alamo Huecos and was named after the Ho Che Min trail of Viet Cong fame. Since 81 ran between the two ranges, and since illegals needed to get to some sort of road to be picked up and hauled to sanctuary, Bernie was pretty sure she could find these pathways. In fact, Henry’s remark had rankled, even though he was smiling at her when he said it. And it still rankled.
Her pager summoned. She extracted the phone and turned it on, wondering why she wasn’t being contacted by the radio. She had an exciting, but momentary and illogical, thought that it might be Jim Chee calling. He’d had time to get the letter she’d sent him. But he wouldn’t know her pager number. It would be some confidential stuff, maybe. Henry had warned her about dopers eavesdropping on their calls.
“Officer Manuelito,” she said, still hoping.
“This is Ed Henry. Where are you?”
Bernie exhaled. “On I-10. Almost to Hatchita.”
“Do a U across the divider and get on back here to the office. Some things I forgot to talk to you about.”
“Oh?”
“About signs to spot. Evidence. What to take pictures of. Did you take any last week? If you did, bring ’em along. I need to see how you’re doing.”
Bringing along the pictures was no problem. The half of them she hadn’t put in the envelope with the letter to Jim were still in the two-for-the-price-of-one Walgreen’s photos sack, along with the roll of negatives. Not the sort of stuff you’d shoot for a contest, Bernie thought, as she flipped through them, but the oryx showed up well in the telephoto picture. Beautiful animal, she thought. Why would anyone consider killing one of them a sport?
* * *
Ed Henry gave the oryx hardly a glance. He spent more time studying, and criticizing, portraits on tire treads, broken-down thistles, snapped stems, footprints, and the like, and then went back to her pictures at the building site.
“Why did you go in there? No Trespassing sign and all?”
Bernie explained it. First thinking the truck she’d noticed would lead her back to the highway, then being curious about the Mexican license plate, and what it was doing out in that empty landscape. Being allowed entry, and finding that the truck was part of a watering place construction project.
Henry nodded, finding it sensible.
“I don’t think I told you about the Tuttle Ranch,” he said, looking up from the photos. “Probably not. It’s sort of a private arrangement.”
Bernie shook her head.
“Well, the deal is like this. The Tuttle people are sort of subrosa partners of ours. They keep their eye out for the illegals, mules, stuff we’d like to know. Those watering places they have for the game animals attract the Mexicans too. The Tuttle people watch for them and tip us off. Things like that. All quiet because there are some people in the smuggling trade who wouldn’t like that. Might react. You know what I mean?”
All through this account, Henry’s eyes had been studying her.
“React?”
Henry nodded. “Get mean. Cut fences. Shoot those expensive African animals. Maybe shoot a Tuttle cowboy.”
“You mean the illegals?”
“I mean those smuggling contractors. The coyotes. Take their money, slip ’em over the border, and dump ’em off. And maybe bring in a few sacks of cocaine on the side.”
Bernie nodded again. “Yeah, the man who let me in said they’d had some vandalism.”
“The bottom line to all this is the Tuttle people help us and in return we don’t bother them. Some of the high-society Mexican big shots like to come in for some big-game hunting. We don’t bother them about visas. Anything like that. And we don’t go barging in there to pick up illegals. Just let them know. They sort of arrest them for us and we go haul them into jail.”
“I didn’t know anything about any of this,” Bernie said.
Henry smiled at her. “Well, now you do. My fault anyway. Should have done my job and filled you in on all these little side issues.” He shuffled through the photographs and extracted a close-up Bernie had taken of a tire tread.
“Why’d you take this one?”
“It looked unusual.”
“It is,” Henry said. “It’s what we used to call a ‘recap.’ You take a worn-out tire and salvage it by replacing the original tread with new rubber. Sort of melting it on. Not done here anymore. Or not much. But they still do it some places in Mexico.”
“It looks like it has a sort of a tread,” Bernie said.
“They press that into the rubber when it’s soft. And the point is we’ve been seeing this odd-looking tire mark for several years now. We intercept a drug shipment, or a busload of illegals, and there it is.”
“But you’ve never caught the driver?”
“Nope. Had a witness or two who think they saw the pickup. An old blue Ford 150, they think it was. Say they see it somewhere near where the action was. Driving by, driving away, parked, or something. Driver supposed to be a skinny man. Oldish.”
“So if I see the truck that’s leaving these tracks, I stop him?”
“No. Call it in and keep it in sight. Could be dangerous,” Henry said. “Or most likely, nothing at all. Just coincidence.” Henry gathered the prints and the negative roll into a pile, opened his desk drawer, swept it in, and shut the drawer. He gave Bernie a challenging look.
“This all of them?”
“Some of them I dumped,” Bernie said. “Out of focus, or the film fogged or something.”
A moment of silence. Henry looked doubtful.
“But those would be on the negatives, wouldn’t they?”
“Sure,” Bernie said, wondering what this was about.
“Now I need one more picture,” Henry said. He opened the drawer again, extracted a pocket-sized camera, and made sure it was loaded. “Need one of you.”
And what was this about? Her expression must have asked that question.
“I’ll send it out to the Tuttle people so they’ll know you,” Henry said.
“So they’ll know you’re a legitimate Customs Service Agent.”
That stung a little. “Don’t I look like one. Uniform, badge, all that.”
“You didn’t mention the jewelry,” Henry said. “You’re out of uniform and now I have photographic evidence to prove it if I ever need to fire you. I mean wearing that little silver fellow on your lapel. Looks like you’re going to a party or something. That stickpin’s pretty but it’s not allowed when you’re on duty.”
Bernie touched the stickpin—an inch-long but skinny replica of a Navajo yei her clan called Big Thunder. Her mother’s brother had given it to her at her kinaalda ceremony when the family had gathered to celebrate her new womanhood. “He will look after you,” Hostiin Yellow had told her. “Have him with you any time you need help.”
“I didn’t know about that regulation,” Bernie said. “The pin’s a family thing. I just wear it for luck.”
“Just have your luck off duty then,” Henry said.
11
“Let’s go over this again,” Captain Largo said. “As I understand it, you want me to send you down to the Mexican border for a couple of days or so, so you can get yourself involved in a U.S. Customs Service situation, because maybe it’s connected to an FBI case in which you’re not supposed to be involved anyway. Is that what you’re asking?”
Captain Largo was leaning back in his swivel chair. He had let his bifocals slide down his nose and was staring at Chee over them (and over three or four stacks of paperwork). Waiting patiently for Chee to come up with a response.
“Well,” Chee said. “It could be that ...”
Largo waited again, pushed his glasses back into proper position, shifted in his chair.
“Why not just walk in here and say something like, ah, like, ‘Captain, I’ve got a bunch of leave time coming and things are sort of quiet around here now, why don’t I take a few days and go down south and see how Bernie Manuelito is doing.’ Why not try that approach?”
Largo was grinning when he said it, but Chee didn’t see the humor in it.
“Because I’m uneasy about the situation. We have this peculiar homicide up here. Looks professional. Big federal cover-up, and all that. And then we find out there’s some sort of connection down where Officer Manuelito is working.”
“It’s Customs Officer Manuelito now,” Captain Largo said. “We lost her. And whatever is going on down there, if anything at all, it’s going to be a Customs case and not ours.”
“Not unless it connects with our homicide up here,” Chee said. “Not unless it gives us a way to—”
Captain Largo made a dismissive gesture. “A way to what? Solve an FBI felony case? Way to get Sergeant Chee back on the Bureau’s Bad Boy list? Why don’t you just call that young woman. Call her and give her a report on the situation on the telephone?”
“I did that,” Chee said.
Largo sighed, shook his head. “Oh, hell with it,” he said. “Give Officer Yazzie a rundown on anything pressing while you’re gone. And don’t drive one of our vehicles down there.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And tell Bernie we miss her,” Largo said.
Four hours later, Jim Chee was driving through Nutt, New Mexico, on Highway 26, taking advantage of the shortcut that took one from Interstate 25 to Interstate 10 without the long dogleg to Las Cruces, taking advantage of that five-mile-over-the-speed-limit State Police usually allowed. He was in such a hurry that he barely noticed how the slanting light of the setting sun changed the colors of the Good Sight Mountains to his right, and lit the very tips of Massacre Peak to his left, and because he still hadn’t figured out how to deal with Bernadette Manuelito. Actually, he had figured it out five or six different ways. None of them seemed satisfactory. And now with the little town of Nutt miles behind him he was almost to Deming. Customs Agent Manuelito had said she would meet him at the coffee shop attached to the Giant Station just off the intersection. He had rehearsed how he would greet her, what he would say, all that. And then he had modified his plan because his memory of how she had sounded when he called her from Shiprock had changed a little. He’d been kidding himself when he thought she sounded so friendly.
Actually it had been all very formal except right at first. Bernie had said: “Would you believe I really miss you, Jim. Imagine! Missing your boss.” And he knew that polite pause between the ‘Jim’ and the ‘Imagine’ was there to give him time to say: “Bernie, I miss you too.” He’d wasted it by trying to think of exactly the right way to say it. Something to let Bernie know that he woke up every morning thinking about her, and how empty life seemed with her out of it. And while he was trying to think of how to say that, he said something like, “Ah,” or “Well,” and before he could get it together, Bernie was talking again. She’d said: “But we drive better vehicles down here, and this new boss is nice. He has a mustache.” And thus the call had ended with none of the things said he wanted to say and Chee feeling thoroughly stupid and forlorn.
Chee spotted a new-model Ford 150 such as Bernie had described among the rows of huge eighteen-wheelers the coffee shop had lured off Interstate 10. He left his older and dirtier pickup near it, walked into the shop. It was crowded. Mostly men. Mostly truckers Chee guessed. Bernie was in a booth, her back to the door, listening to an older woman sitting opposite her. An Indian woman, but not a Navajo. Sort of resembled a Zuñi. Probably an O’odham. That tribe had its reservation on the Mexican border, lapping over into Arizona. The woman noticed him, smiled, said something to Bernie. Probably telling Bernie the Navajo cop had arrived. Then she was gathering her things together, and Bernie was sliding out of the booth, coming toward him, smiling.
Chee sucked in a deep breath. “Hello, Bernie.”
“Hello, Jim,” she said. “This is my friend, Customs Officer Eleanda Garza. She lets me share her house down in Rodeo and she’s helping teach me to be a Customs agent.”
Chee took his eyes off of Bernie, saw Customs Officer Garza was holding out her hand, saying, “How do you do.”
Chee took it, said, “Pleased to meet you.”
“Have to be going,” Garza said. “I’ll leave you the booth.”
“You think we could find a quieter place?” Chee asked.
“I doubt it,” Bernie said. “It’s Friday night. Night for eating out in Deming. We’d probably have to wait an hour for a table.”
They took the booth, with Chee trying not to show his disappointment. She ordered iced tea. He ordered coffee, wound too tight for food. Then he worked through the standard delivery of news about mutual friends and lapsed into silence.
“Your turn now,” Chee said. “Anything new with you before we get into what I want to tell you about. Are you having any problems?
She considered that a moment, smiled. “Well, to tell the truth, I managed to get lost and I never thought I could do that anywhere. But, you know, different landscape, different set of mountains, even worse roads than we were dealing with. In fact, that’s how I got to that Tuttle Ranch.” She laughed. “I was trying to follow the truck that was going there. Figured he was heading back to Interstate 10.”
“That’s the rich guy’s place? The one who’s raising exotic animals for his friends to hunt?”
Bernie nodded.
“Close to here? I want to see that some day.”
Bernie extracted a paper napkin from its holder and a pen from her purse. “Here we are,” she said, and sketched a map—a line going east representing I-10, an intersection identified with a state road number, another intersection with a county road number, and dotted lines for dirt roads. That done, she explained the landmarks. “Trouble is, when you get here”—she tapped the end of the last line with the pen point—“you come to a No Trespassing sign and a locked gate.”
“And where’s the watering station they were making?”
“About four miles in from the gate. You can’t see because it’s beyond a ridge. Anyway, they keep the gate locked. So first you have to persuade so
meone to let you in.”
Chee picked up the map and studied it. Typical of Bernie, it was neatly done. He noticed Bernie was studying him, looking expectant. And looking beautiful, which made him even more nervous than he had been.
“You talk now,” she said. “You said you wanted to tell me something.”
Chee picked up his coffee cup, took a sip, cleared his throat. “Maybe we should get your supervisor in on that,” he said. “Mr. Henry, isn’t it?”
Bernie looked down at her hands for a moment, and then looked up at him. Expression strained. “Tell me first,” she said.
“Well, I pretty well already have,” Chee said.
“You just wanted to tell me about the name of the welding company being the same? That made you worry, I mean? Was there anything you didn’t want to say on a telephone line?”
What did that mean, Chee wondered. He laughed, shook his head, looked embarrassed. “That and some odds and ends.”
“You thought the line might be tapped?”
“I think that’s unlikely,” Chee said. “But then a few days ago I would have thought it highly unlikely that a fellow on the Jicarilla Reservation could find a credit card in a garbage can, use it to buy gas, and within three days somebody in Washington knows where he used the card.”
Bernie’s eyebrows raised. She said: “Did that happen?” And then: “Whose card was it?” But she didn’t sound as if she cared.
“A fellow who seems not to have existed,” Chee said. “At least the local FBI folks who’re in charge of the case aren’t saying.”
Bernie held up her hand. “OK. Start at the beginning. But before you do, and before you decide whether you want Supervisor Henry in on all of this, would it help you to know that Henry grilled me about why I followed that welding truck out to the Tuttle Ranch. He said Customs, or anyway our local Customs crew, has a special deal with that ranch. And he had me give him all the photos. Like the ones I sent you. Even the negatives.”
Early in this discourse, Chee had leaned forward, intent. Now he said: “Special deal?”
“He said Tuttle’s watering holes for the animals attract dehydrated illegals,” Bernie said. “So Tuttle’s ranch hands watch for that and tip off Customs. In return, Customs doesn’t go onto the ranch.”
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