The Sinister Pig jlajc-16

by Tony Hillerman

  No apparent reason to worry. No apparent reason for Ed Henry to send her here. Despite that, she pulled her vehicle up beside the new building where it was partially concealed. When she got out to explore, she made sure her pistol was safely in its holster.

  The front door that had been installed on the building was of heavy hardwood and secured by a substantial lock. Except for that, there wasn’t much remarkable about the building. It had been placed on a concrete foundation and the front and side windows covered with plywood panels. Bernie walked around behind it, looking for a back door. It had been boarded over too, but high windows on both sides of the door were still glassed. Bernie considered this, decided the need for security had been partly offset by the need to allow some fresh air and daylight to reach the interior. The slope of the land made the windows high enough to prove some safety from intruders.

  She drove through the weeds and gravel to the back door and then parked with the front bumper as close as she could get it to the wall under a window. She climbed on the hood, clutched the window ledge, pulled herself up, and looked in. By the time her eyes had adjusted to the darkness inside her hands were aching from the strain, but she could see the building was a single room, mostly unfurnished. She lowered herself, rubbed her hands and wrists, kept her eyes tightly closed, and hoisted herself again.

  The center of the room was occupied by an odd-looking structure made of pipes, some very large, others smaller. The purpose of this contraption seemed to Bernie to be support of a central pipe, which curved upward from the floor and terminated at a large diameter cap—reminding her of the screw-on cap of a huge peanut butter jar. This biggest pipe, and several smaller ones, were equipped with valves, perhaps to open or close them, and she could see faces of several dials. For what? She was considering that and thinking of the pain in her fingers and wrists when she heard a voice behind her.

  A man’s voice. It said: “Young woman. What are you looking for?” And this was followed by a laugh.

  Bernie, still clinging to the windowsill, looked over her shoulder. She saw a stocky man wearing a tan hat, sunglasses, an expensive-looking hunting jacket, and boots standing behind her car, looking up at her. He held a rifle with telescopic sight cradled on his arm and sort of pointing in her direction. Behind him and to the side stood two other men. One, still wearing a neatly trimmed mustache and the military fatigues in which she had first seen him, was the Mexican driver of the Seamless Weld truck. The other was bigger, taller, short-cut reddish hair, and a dark blue shirt, and was staring at her. And when their eyes met he smiled. It seemed somehow sympathetic.

  The stocky man wearing the sunglasses gestured at her with the rifle barrel.

  “Get on down from there now,” Sunglasses said. “If you’re looking for something, come on in the shed with us and we’ll show it to you.”

  “I’m coming,” Bernie said. “Who are you? Are you Mr. Tuttle?” She lowered herself to the truck hood, jumped off in the direction away from the rifle, unsnapped her holster, saw the rifle barrel was now pointed exactly at her, and let her hand fall to her side.

  “Good thinking,” the man said. “Diego,” he shouted, “get over here and help this young lady with her pistol.”

  Bernie was certain now. He was the man with the Seamless Weld truck she had followed here. He walked around the car, lifted the pistol out of her holster, said, “Sorry, madam,” examined the pistol, and stuck it in his hip pocket.

  “This is Mr. Diego de Vargas,” Sunglasses said, “and this man over here is Budge C. de Baca.” He laughed. “That ‘C. de Baca’ means ‘Head of a Cow.’ ” And I am the owner of Jacob Tuttle, which makes me owner of this ranch, which puts you in distinguished company. But we want to know what you are doing here, trespassing on my property. So we’ll all go inside and talk about it. Bring her along, Budge.”

  “You’re the ranch owner?” Bernie asked. “I’d been hoping to meet you. I wanted to ask you about Mexican trucks coming in here.”

  “He’s Rawley Winsor,” Budge said, and motioned her forward. At the front of the structure, Winsor took off his sunglasses, unlocked the door, and gestured for them to follow him inside. Budge leaned against Bernie, whispered something. Bernie said, “What?”

  “Do you understand Spanish?”

  “Yes,” she said. This wasn’t what she’d expected. Wasn’t what she’d been dreading. Or maybe it was.

  “Tell him you’re with the DEA,” Budge whispered. “Tell him you can be bought.”

  Bernie nodded.

  Winsor dusted off a wooden chair, sat himself on it.

  “Set her down on the bench by the table,” Winsor said. “We need to ask her some questions.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “And we cut this awful short. Diego, get that trap set. It’s just about time for our precious pigs to begin arriving.”

  De Vargas was standing beside the pipe contraption in the middle of the room. He spun a valve, causing a hissing sound, spun another. The sound this time was more like a sigh. He seized the handles on the round cap that closed the end of the master pipe, strained, turned it, and then spun it off. Bernie smelled a rush of stale air, and then de Vargas lifted what might have been a soccer ball from the pipe. It was a dirty yellow with two thick black rubber strips around it. Gaskets, perhaps, to make it fit tightly inside the pipe. Diego put the ball on the table behind Bernie, reclosed the pipe valve, and wiped his hands on the legs of his pants.

  Winsor made an impatient gesture with his hands, said: “Get the cap off.”

  Diego unscrewed a round cap, dropped it on the table, reached into the hole, began extracting transparent plastic sacks. He lined them on the tabletop, reached back, and brought out more. “I see they sacked it,” he said.

  “That’d be enough for now,” Winsor said, and looked at Bernie.

  “You’re Officer Bernadette Manuelito, now of the Customs Service Border Patrol. Used to be Navajo Tribal Police. But we don’t know why you made the switch. Explain that.”

  “I don’t know myself,” Bernie said.

  Winsor decided to let that drop. He pointed to the sacks beside her.

  “Do you know what that is?”

  Bernie cleared her throat, glanced at Budge. He was staring at her, frowning, looking tense.

  “If I had to guess I’d say those little packages contain what we like to call one of the ‘uncontrollable substances.’ And since it’s a white powder, I’d guess it’s cocaine. If it’s good refined nose candy, uncut by cake sugar and the other stuff you mix it with, it should bring you something like twenty-five thousand dollars a kilo.”

  Winsor showed no reaction to that.

  “So what are your intentions?” he asked.

  “Are you asking what is my duty, or what do I intend to do? My duty is to get my pistol back from that man over there and put you all under arrest for possession of an illegal substance. However, my intention is to try to calculate how many kilos you have there, and how many more of those yellow balls you have stored in that crazy-looking pipe, and multiply all those kilos by twenty-five thousand dollars, and then multiply that by ten percent. Then I will tell you that’s what my fee would be, just ten percent, for reporting to my superior that there was nothing in this shack but old furniture and rusty junk pipeline stuff.”

  Winsor waved Diego out of the folding chair in which he had been sitting, moved it over in front of where Bernie sat on the table, and seated himself.

  “Who is your superior? Name and position.”

  Bernie managed a smile. “If you’re thinking of my Customs Patrol Officer uniform, thinking of the Border Patrol, then the name is Ed Henry, and he is supervisor of the unit I was loaned to, to do some checking into things—such as this. But if you’re thinking of my actual boss, my superior in the Drug Enforcement Agency, I don’t intend to tell you until we have some sort of arrangement.”

  Winsor digested this a moment. Said: “Why not?”

  She shook her head. “Hate to say this but I’m
not sure either one of us could trust him. Henry either, for that matter.”

  Winsor took a silver cigarette case from his jacket pocket, opened it, and leaned forward to offer one to Bernie, who shook her head.

  He held out the case to Budge, then withdrew it, laughing. “Budge doesn’t smoke, either, but I keep trying to tempt him,” Winsor said. “He wants to live forever.” He took one himself, snapped on the lighter built into the case, inhaled deeply, and blew out a cloud of smoke.

  “What do you think of what this young lady says, Budge? Does it make sense to you?”

  Budge had been watching Diego, who had been watching Winsor, expecting to be offered a cigarette. When he wasn’t, his expression hardened.

  “Sounds sensible,” Budge said.

  “Why?”

  “Because ninety percent is better than a hundred, if you have to go to prison to keep the hundred.”

  Winsor stared at him. “I think you’re forgetting that assignment I gave you.”

  The pig trap where Diego was standing began whistling. “What’s that?” Budge said, and got up from his chair.

  “It’s the pig signal on top of the pipe there,” Diego said. “The pressure sets it off. It tells you another pig has arrived in the trap.”

  “I’ve got to see how that works,” Budge said. He pressed in against Diego, who was turning the handle on a pipe marked “slowdown valve.” The whistling died away. Budge slipped the pistol from Diego’s pocket, felt Diego’s body stiffen, said, “Bueno, bueno, calm yourself,” into Diego’s ear. “Remember, we go together.”

  He slid the pistol under his belt, hidden by his jacket flap.

  “What are you doing?” Winsor asked.

  “I guess we have another of our sinister pigs arriving,” Diego said.

  “Budge turned to Winsor. “You want it taken out?”

  “They’ll be coming along regularly now,” Winsor said. “Let Diego do it. I want to know if you’re ready to handle your job.”

  “Just about,” Budge said.

  “I don’t like the way your mind’s started working. All this hesitation. Is it because this is such a good-looking young lady? Maybe your macho brainlobe is heating up. If we let this woman out of here, even if she’s totally bought and paid for, how the hell can you ever rest easy again.”

  After saying that, Winsor shifted in the chair. The rifle resting on his lap shifted with him, its barrel turned now toward where Budge stood, leaning against the table. “We turn her loose, then she’s just one more damned thing out of control. We buy her, how long does she stay bought?”

  Bernie, who had been watching Budge as he walked back from the pig trap, had shifted her attention to Winsor. She sat now, pale and silent, with her eyes half closed.

  “She’s a federal officer,” Budge said. “From what she told you, she must have been assigned to us, more or less. If we kill her, it’s going to be a top-priority case for the FBI and the DEA and everybody else. They’ll never stop coming after us until they get us.”

  Winsor chuckled, shook his head. “Budge, there’s a lot of things you just don’t understand. The cops at the bottom do what the people on top tell them to do. You heard about that man shot up on the Navajo Reservation. Did I tell you that he became officially the unfortunate victim of a hunting accident.” Winsor was grinning. “I guess it was a hunting accident, in a way. The Mexicans shot him because they thought he was hunting this pipeline project of ours. Now our friends in Washington tell us he was actually trying to find out who’s been stealing all that Indian oil royalty money.”

  “If you’re thinking of making Miss Manuelito a hunting accident it won’t work. She doesn’t look much like an oryx.”

  Winsor’s face was flushed. “Knock it off, Budge,” he said. “We’re thinking of doing it just like you did Chrissy. Except you don’t have the chloroform this time, and you’ll drop her body out over the mountains instead of the ocean.”

  Budge stared at Winsor, saying nothing, thinking of Chrissy, aware that Winsor was studying him, knowing what he would have to do, knowing it was absolutely inevitable.

  “Well,” Winsor said, “let’s get with it. He turned toward Diego. “Diego. Bring me Officer Manuelito’s pistol.”

  Diego looked rattled. “Ah, well, I don’t have it no more.”

  “Where the hell is it then,” Winsor said. “We’re going to need it. Shoot her with it. Make it look like another accident. A woman who didn’t know how to handle a—”

  Winsor’s mouth remained open, but a sudden, and apparently terrible, thought stopped the words. He jerked his head around. Stared at Budge. Shouted: “Son of a bitch!”

  What was happening was a blur of action. Winsor was swiveling in his chair, snarling an obscenity, cocking the rifle, swinging the barrel toward Budge. Budge was snatching Bernie’s pistol from his belt, his expression saying that he knew he’d waited a fatal second too long.

  Bernie screamed something that might have been “No!” and kicked frantically at Winsor’s rifle.

  Winsor, still cursing, slammed the rifle barrel against her head, and then back at Budge as he pulled the trigger.

  But now it was Winsor who was a fatal split second late.

  25

  Dashee’s racetrack-braking technique sent his pickup into a sideways slide and produced a fountain of dust over Bernie’s vehicle and the adjoining building.

  “She’s in the car,” Chee said. “I can see the back of her head.” He was out of Dashee’s truck before it stopped, pulling on the handle of Bernie’s car door, shouting at her. She unlocked the door, looked up at him. One of those white medical-kit bandages was taped over her forehead, and below it there was blood on her face. She was crying.

  “Bernie,” he said. “What happened. Are you all right?” He reached in for her, helped her out, pulled her to him in a crushing hug. “I’ve been scared to death,” Chee said. “I’ve been terrified.”

  “Me too,” Bernie said, her voice muffled against his shirt. “I’m still shaking.”

  “Oh, Bernie,” Chee said. “I was afraid I’d lost you. What happened to you here? Why are you crying.”

  Bernie produced a sort of a choked-off laugh. “That will take a long time to explain,” she said. “And you’re about to crush me.”

  He relaxed the hug, but just a little. “Who did that to you?” Chee said, voice grim. “Someone hit you. We’ve got to get you to a doctor.”

  “How did you find me here?” Bernie said. “And why were you looking for me.”

  “Because I love you,” Chee said. “Because I want to take you home where you’ll be safe.”

  “Oh,” Bernie said. She returned the hug, and then she was crying again.

  Dashee’s voice interrupted this. “Hey,” he shouted. “We’ve got a dead man in here.”

  Dashee was standing in the open doorway of the shed, pointing in. “He’s on his back on the floor. Looks like he fell off a chair.” He leaned through the doorway, looking inside. “Blood on the floor, too. And a rifle. Looks like I may have myself my very first homicide as a Federal Bureau of Land Management Security Officer.”

  Bernie released her hold on Chee and slumped backward onto the car seat, shaking again.

  “It’s all right, Bernie,” Chee said. “It’s OK. Take it easy for a while.”

  Dashee was hurrying up. “Yeah, Bernie. And then tell us what happened.”

  “It was awful,” Bernie said. “The man who was supposed to kill me, he didn’t want to do it, and he had gotten my pistol from the Seamless Weld man somehow, and so Mr. Winsor was going to shoot him, and—” She was crying again.

  “Stay here with Bernie,” Chee said. “And call for some medical help. I’ll go in and take a look.”

  What he saw was as Dashee had described it. A well-dressed, stocky, middle-aged man sprawled on his back beside an overturned chair. Chee squatted beside him. Shot in the chest, but the blood that had spread from under him obviously must have come from the e
xit wound. What he could see was already drying. He scanned the room quickly, noted the pipeline mechanism, noted the row of sacks filled with a white substance, noted the dirty yellow ball on one end, the screw cap beside it, and the white sacks still jammed inside.

  Leaphorn had it right, Chee thought. Naturally, Leaphorn had it right. The contraption of pipes grown out of the floor was a trap for pipeline-cleaning pigs. And a pressure-release mechanism on its top was whistling— probably a signal another pig was arriving. The ball on the table must be a pig and its guts, now spilled, was probably cocaine. Enough to overdose a thousand users. Quite a pig.

  Chee rushed out into the sunlight. “Did you contact anyone? Are they sending an ambulance?”

  “Bernie had already called the New Mexico State Police,” Dashee said. “And she called her dispatcher. They said they’d sent a helicopter.”

  “Who hit you?” Chee asked. “Was it that man in there?”

  “Where’s his car?” Dashee asked. “What in the world happened?”

  “Did you shoot him, Bernie? What happened to your pistol?”

  “Stop! Stop! Stop!” Bernie shouted. “If you two will just shut up, stop asking questions, and be quiet, I’ll try to tell you.”

  And she did. Starting with climbing on the car hood to look through the window and being surprised by three men.

  “Three men!” A loud exclamation, jointly emerging from Chee and Dashee, both of whom were leaning against the car, looking down at her.