“Oh,” Chrissy said, sounding thoughtful. “But how does Mr. Winsor keep you from being deported?”
“By keeping his mouth shut,” Budge said.
Chrissy produced one of those “what do you mean by that” looks.
Budge considered how to explain. “Let’s say I was no longer a true and faithful servant and became more trouble than I was worth. Mr. Winsor is now keeping me from being deported very simply. Just not tipping off the Immigration folks, or by refraining from telling one of his lawyer friends in the State Department that the people now running my former country have a warrant out for me under my former name. If he wanted me deported, he’d simply make a telephone call to the right person.”
Silence. Then she said: “Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be so nosey.”
“No offense taken,” Budge said.
“I can’t believe you did anything very wrong.”
“Well, I guess you could say I haven’t been a great benefactor for society,” Budge said, and laughed.
“Don’t laugh at yourself. Anyway, you’re fine now. Good job, good prospects. I get the impression that Mr. Winsor will be putting you in charge of things. There’d be a lot more money with that.”
“The Beatles taught us about money. Remember? It won’t buy you love.”
Her response to that sounded slightly angry.
“You like to make fun of money,” she said. “I have to tell you I don’t. I bet you’ve never been poor or you wouldn’t talk like that. I bet you’ve never had to watch your mother trying to borrow money, or been embarrassed in school because of the way you dressed. Or your shoes. Or hearing the other girls telling about what they did during the summer, and all you could do was listen. Things like that.”
“No,” Budge said. “Never anything like that.”
“Well, I have,” she said. “You dream of having money. Like dreaming of paradise. Having money like those people I see when I’m with Rawley.”
All the anger was out of her voice now. It sounded dreamy.
“Listening to them talking about the party in Tokyo. Or being on somebody’s yacht going up the Thames. Being introduced to the Queen. The view from somebody’s villa on the cliff in Sicily. The candlesticks. The silver.” She stopped, sighed. “Oh, well. Maybe someday.”
Winsor’s other young women had never talked like that. One sunny Saturday afternoon when he picked up Chrissy he’d been tempted to tell her about the very blond, very chic, very shapely girl he had delivered to the Winsor address two days earlier. Just make a casual remark about it. See how Chrissy would respond. To learn if she understood how she fit into Winsor’s scheme of things and knew what was happening to her. But he didn’t tell her. He told himself he didn’t tell her because it would have been cruel to tip her off if she didn’t know and insulting if she did. But the real reason he was silent was that he was afraid it would destroy this friendship. And he had come to treasure that.
Then the day came, about a month ago, just as he started the limo engine and was pulling away from the curb, when Chrissy clicked on the intercom and said:
“Budge. I think I’m pregnant.”
That surprised him. It shouldn’t have, perhaps. But it did. And he said nothing at all for a bit, and then he said, “Oh?”
“We’re going to get married. Rawley’s given me an engagement ring. It’s spectacular. I’d show it to you, but I can’t wear it yet. This is going to be secret until he can get his divorce finalized and the wedding arrangements made.”
And he’d said: “Well, Chrissy, I wish you a lot of happiness.” And he’d wondered why he hadn’t heard about this impending divorce. From what he’d been hearing, Winsor was still solidly married to a very socially prominent woman named Margo Lodge Winsor. He’d driven her out to Reagan Airport about two months ago on a flight to their vacation home in the Antilles. He’d never been sent out to pick her up, and Winsor had talked a time or two about his plans for joining her there.
He had no idea what, if anything, to say to Chrissy about that, and a damper fell on their friendly chats for a couple of their trips. But then came that terrible day that forced him to make some decisions.
Budge was remembering that day now, just as Winsor arrived and stood looking down at him.
“Up and at ’em,” Winsor said. “Get moving. You’ve got the plane ready, I trust. Everything all set?”
“For where?” he said, not moving.
“For the old smelter in Sonora,” Winsor said. “Come on. You’re wasting my time.”
Budge looked at his boot tips, then up at Winsor. “OK,” he said. “Away we go.”
The flight from El Paso’s Biggs Field to the old smelter is a mere hundred and fifty or so air miles over a stretch of the emptiest segment of Chihuahua to the emptiest part of Sonora. Dry country, relatively flat, and the pilot’s role complicated only by the chance of encountering the helicopters and radio-controlled drone surveillance aircraft the Border Patrol uses to watch the bottom edge of New Mexico and Arizona.
Winsor sat behind him now, silent, reading papers in a folder. Budge identified the bumpy shape of Sierra Alto Azul Mountain, his navigating mark for the smelter, adjusted his controls, and looked at the desert below him. Grim, dry, hungry, unhappy country, not intended for any life beyond javlina, cactus wrens, and reptiles. Too harsh and cruel for humans, and that returned his thoughts to the last time he’d seen Chrissy, the afternoon Winsor had summoned him into that luxurious office, asked him to sit down—a first for that—and offered him a cigar, which was another first.
“Budge,” he’d said, “I’ve been thinking of the things you’ve managed for me. Four years now, isn’t it, and you’ve never let me down.”
“Four years,” Budge said. “I guess that’s about right.”
“I’m going to give you a bonus,” Winsor said. He was smiling.
“A pay raise?”
“No. Better than that. Cash.” He opened a drawer, extracted a manila envelope, dropped it on the desktop.
“Well, thanks. That’s nice of you,” Budge said. The envelope looked rather thick, which meant probably quite a bit of money, which meant what Winsor now wanted him to do was probably either dangerous or something unusually nasty. The fact it was cash certainly meant Winsor was willing to give up the tax deduction he’d get by making it salary. Therefore, Winsor wanted to leave no way it could be tracked back to Winsor.
Winsor picked up the envelope and tossed it to Budge. He let it fall onto his lap.
“What have I done to deserve this?”
“I didn’t make a list,” Winsor said, smiling again. “But the first thing that comes to mind is that time we had the head shyster for Amareal Corporation over here. And I let you know that I really needed to get a look at what was on those papers he was carrying in his briefcase, you remember that, and that night after you hauled the wino bastard back to his hotel, you came back with copies for me.”
Budge nodded, remembering. The man had been drunk, but not as drunk as he wanted to be. When Winsor had sent Budge a scrawled note, telling him what was needed, he had remembered an all-night Kinko’s copy center around the corner from a convenient bar. He’d suggested his passenger might like a nightcap, stopped at a bar, explained limo drivers have to stay with their vehicle, and, when his passenger was on the bar stool, extracted the folder from the case, hurried it into Kinko’s, got the copies done, got the refilled folder back into the briefcase, and talked his tipsy passenger out of the bar, back into the limo, and turned him over to the hotel doorman.
Winsor had been waiting. “How’d you do that?”
Budge explained it.
Winsor laughed. “The son of a bitch never had a clue. Never guessed how we screwed him. And how about that time you got the Bible Belt congressman photographed with the bimbo. How’d you do that?”
Winsor already knew how that had been done. In fact, had outlined the plan himself. But Budge was patient. He explained it. With this much prepa
ration, the next job Winsor intended to hand him must be something special. As he sat through two more examples of his undercover deeds, his sense of dread was growing.
Finally, Winsor got to it.
“One more problem I want you to handle for me,” he said. “This girl I’ve been having you drive here and there, she’s become a serious problem.”
Budge drew in his breath.
“Which one?”
“The feisty little brunette. Sorts out my lawyer paperwork, keeps it filed, thinks she’s going to be a lawyer. She’s copied off a bunch of very sensitive stuff. Letters, so forth. Confidential material. The little bitch wants to blackmail me with it.”
“What’s her name?” Budge knew the name. He wanted to make Winsor say it. He wanted a moment to think. He was sure Winsor was lying. But how could he deal with this?
“Chrissy something-or-other,” Winsor said. “Some sort of Wop last name.”
“Oh, yes,” Budge said. “She talks a lot.”
Winsor nodded. “Too damn much,” he said. “I want her to disappear.”
“Send her away somewhere, you mean? Different assignment at one of your companies?”
Winsor studied Budge a long moment. “You’re playing dumb, aren’t you? Didn’t I mention blackmail? This is dead-serious business.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“I want a permanent solution to this. I want this problem eliminated. Permanently, absolutely, and eternally.”
“Kill her?”
“That’s part of it. But there has to be a way we can do it so it won’t cause us any damage. I can help by setting her up for it.”
And with that, Winsor explained what he had in mind.
Now, behind Budge in the little jet, Winsor was fastening his seat belt. They were close enough now to see the smokestacks of the old smelter. Budge eased back on the throttle and began a slow pass over the graded earth landing strip to make certain it looked safe. He noticed a large panel truck parked beside the doors of the only new-looking building on the grounds—a slope-roofed box with metal walls. The only other vehicles visible were a black sports utility vehicle parked next to the strip, with a red convertible looking tiny beside it. But nothing on the strip itself made it look riskier than landing on dirt always is.
It turned out to be a smooth one. Budge rolled the jet up to the cars, shut off the engines, and watched the three men waiting with the vehicles.
Rawley Winsor climbed out of the plane and looked at Budge. “Stay in the plane,” Winsor said. “I’ll either be right back, or I’ll send someone for you.”
Two of the men stood by the door and greeted Winsor with bows and signs of respect. The other one—wearing a Mexican army fatigue uniform and the symbols of a colonel—stood aside, studying the Falcon 10. He grinned at Budge.
“Una Dessault,” he said, his tone full of approval. “Una Falcona Diez?”
“Exactamente,” Budge said, returning the grin. “En Ingles, una Falcon Ten. Quiere usted ver la enterior?”
The colonel’s grin widened. He did, indeed, wish to see the interior. But Winsor cut off the conversation, climbed into the SUV with his greeters, and they drove off to where the truck was parked near the smelter. Budge gave them time to get there, climbed out of the jet, stretched, yawned, made sure all was secured, and followed them at an unhurried walk.
A fourth man was sitting behind the wheel of the truck. He nodded to Budge, said, “Como esta?”
“Bien. Y usted?”
The driver shrugged.
Budge walked through the doorway into the new building.
There wasn’t much in it. Winsor and the two who had greeted him so warmly were clustered at an odd-looking structure mounted atop two pipes jutting from the floor. Each of these supporting legs was equipped with a wheel, which Budge guessed would open and close some sort of pressure valves. If that guess was right, he presumed those valves would control the flow of something—natural gas, air, fluids—that was being forced under pressure into the larger pipe that these two legs supported. Budge estimated the large pipe had an interior diameter of eighteen or twenty inches, and it had its own set of valve wheels. The butt end near Budge was closed with a stainless-steel screw-on cap with a plate on it that read PIG LAUNCHER, and, in smaller print, something that looked like MERICAM SPECIALTY PRODUCTS. From that terminal the pipe angled downward and disappeared out the back wall of the building.
Budge’s guess about the legs—literally “pipe stem legs”—being sources of pumped pressure was quickly confirmed. Air hoses from a new-looking gasoline engine and pressure pump were connected to them. The engine running, the pump was working, and one of Winsor’s greeters, clad in blue coveralls, seemed to be showing Winsor which levers opened which vents to deliver the pressurized air into the pipe.
Budge spent a moment trying to fathom what all this meant, decided he lacked any helpful knowledge, and looked around the room. The uniformed Mexican stood beside a wall, studying him. Behind the Mexican was an orderly stack of sacks, apparently of sturdy white plastic. Two other men, shirtless, wearing sandals and dusty overalls, had one of the sacks open and were spooning white stuff from one of the sacks into a cup. He weighed the cup on a scale sitting on the floor beside them and then poured it carefully into a funnel stuck in a hole in what looked to Budge like a slightly oversized soccer ball—bright yellow and seemingly equipped with a large screw-out cap. A long double row of such balls was lined against the wall. They adjoined a stack of tubes, metallic-looking but perhaps plastic. Each was about three feet long with their ends screwed on like bottle caps. Budge studied the balls and tubes, concluded they were about the size to fit inside the pipe.
For what purpose? It seemed likely to Budge that the white powder in the sack was cocaine, and the purpose was to fit the balls full of it into the pipe and use the air-pressure system to push them to wherever the pipe went. Which must be to that rich and self-indulgent North American dope market. Which must mean the pipe extended under the U.S. border and thus was invisible to the watchful scrutiny of the U.S. Border Patrol with its helicopters and drone aircraft patrols.
If that guess was right, it eliminated some of the uncertainty for Budge. That cocaine, even if it was cut with some sort of diluting powder, would be worth many, many millions. The last he’d read about the drug trade listed high-quality uncut coke at thirty thousand dollars a kilogram in New York. Maybe less now, or maybe more. With Rawley Winsor involved in this project, the stuff here was probably pure.
No wonder this project now had such high priority for Winsor. And no wonder he seemed desperate to keep the War on Drugs alive and well. Legalizing marijuana, or any of the stuff Congress liked to call “controlled substances,” would eliminate the multibillion-dollar profits and quickly reduce the market size. Users would be buying in licensed government stores, with the profits and taxes going into rehabilitation programs. Even worse for the drug barons, the glamour of doing something illegal would be gone for the teenagers, and there’d be no reason left for the drug gangs to hire them to push the stuff in school yards and keep the list of customers multiplying.
Winsor was walking up, frowning.
“I told you to stay with the plane,” he said.
“I did,” Budge said. “Then I had to take a leak, get a little exercise, and I decided to see what was keeping you so long.”
“You stepped into something that you may wish you hadn’t. Sticky stuff,” Winsor said. He glanced at the uniformed Mexican. So did Budge. The Mexican, looking embarrassed, glanced away.
“What’s the difference,” Budge said. He waved across the floor. “This is interesting. What’s in the sacks? Something illegal, I’d bet. And what’s with the pipe gadget there?”
Winsor glared at him. Then he shook his head. “Nothing you want to talk about,” he said. “Not ever.”
“If somebody ever wanted to talk about it with me, all I could say is I’m no expert but it looks to me like Rawley Winsor
has something going with the Mexicans to reopen that old smelter, reopen a pipeline to bring in the fuel, and start using the equipment for something or other. Get some engineer or geologist to find out what. Maybe Mr. Winsor’s going to be drilling for oil. Something like that.”
Winsor was grinning. “Budge,” he said. “You should know by now you can’t kid me. If I believed you’re as stupid as you want me to believe you wouldn’t be working for me.”
Budge considered that. “Fair enough,” he said. “But either you trust me all the way, or you don’t trust me at all, and if you don’t, then I quit. But the way it is, I’m working for you. What do you want me to do now?”
“Come on,” Winsor said, walking toward the door. “Let’s get out of here. The colonel serves as sort of an envoy for the Mexicans invested in this business. He and I are going to get some business done. I want you back at the plane. And I want you to be remembering what happens to you if you do decide to quit.”
He stopped at the door, stared at Budge.
“You understand what I’m saying?” Winsor asked.
“I do.”
“We still have most of that bundle of pesos in the plane and we don’t want anyone breaking in. Eat that lunch you brought. Get some sleep. We’re going over the border to the Tuttle Ranch bright and early tomorrow. Landing on another dirt strip. You’ll want to be fresh.”
“OK,” Budge said. “I’ll have to call the FAA folks and make sure they know we have clearance. Do you have any problem with that.”
“None,” Winsor said. He handed Budge a photograph. “Nice-looking girl there. Take a good look at her.”
Budge agreed. She was nice-looking. Great eyes. Nice-shaped face. And, he noticed, nice shape even in that uniform she was wearing.
“Who is she? And why am I supposed to get interested?”
“Well, ...” Winsor said. “Did I mention before we left that you might have to kill a cop? ... Well, this is her. The Mexicans in this business agree she looks like a serious problem. Some sort of an undercover agent planted in the Border Patrol. They said they dealt with one such problem for us. That fellow who ... that fellow who got himself shot in a hunting accident up in northern New Mexico. The colonel says they eliminated that problem for us and now it’s our turn.”
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