The Echelon Vendetta

by David Stone

  “Are you here for Pinto?” “You told the Colorado state cops that Pinto was dead.” More silence, while Horsecoat tried to work out a way of dealing

  with his present situation; although barely twenty-seven, he’d had years of practice in the deceitful arts, honing his manipulative powers on a succession of band counselors and social workers and youth justice advocates and probation officers, and although he wasn’t brave he had a lot of low cunning, which is sometimes a lot more useful, at least in the short run.

  “That true, what you said about the Ruger?” “Yes.” “I can go to death row just for having it?” “Absolutely. And I will personally guarantee it.” “Did a guy really get shot in the head a couple a days ago?” “Yes. With this gun.” “But I didn’t have it a couple days ago. I loaned it to a friend.” “What friend?” “What’s in it for me if I talk to you?” “I won’t kill you.” Some sort of sly internal voice persuaded Wilson Horsecoat that

  now was the right time to show Dalton a little ’tude, a touch of

  moxie. Horsecoat was poorly advised. “Hey! Lick my dick, you fag. You can’t do nothing to me.” Dalton looked at him, at the young man’s bony underfed body,

  his thin pretense of street fighter’s toughness. He backhanded the boy across the cheekbone, knocking him backward into the sweet-grass.

  He scrambled to his feet and backed away from Dalton. “I told you not to swear,” said Dalton, his tone gentle. “Are you nuts? Do you wanna die?” he said, his voice breaking,

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  his round eyes showing white. “I’m not the problem. It’s not me.

  It’s Pinto. He’s the problem. I talk to you, Pinto will come for me.”

  “Pinto’s not here. I am. Why did you kill Moot Gibson?”

  “I didn’t. Pinto did it.”

  “Why?”

  Dalton watched while the young man worked out the angles, the desperation clear in his pale wet face. There had to be a way to handle this, he was thinking, some way to get around it. He looked at Dalton’s stony face, his cold hard stare, and saw nothing there but sudden death. It was either die now or maybe die later, and maybe dead later was way better than certainly dead here and now. Hell, it really didn’t matter what he told this mean-tempered son of a bitch, because Pinto was going to gut and flay the guy before first light no matter what happened here. The idea here is stay alive, keep the guy talking, and shuffle the deck. He shrugged, wiped his face with both hands.

  “Okay. Why not? Pinto needed the guy’s life. He needed to be Moot Gibson. So he could move around and do what he had to do. Pinto’s an ex-con, got no passport. Gibson had all of that. They were about the same size, and Gibson had real tanned skin, wore his hair long, dressed like a Wannabe Indian, so Pinto killed him. Made it look like a suicide. Out there in that pickup. Windows open so the crows would fuck him up. Me and Ida told the cops it was Pinto’s body. We had to, or he’d have killed us.”

  “Pinto had a passport with Gibson’s name on it. How?”

  “Pinto knows guys from when he was in Deer Lodge. Guys in that business. They also give him a Wyoming driver’s license. He and Gibson looked a lot alike anyway, same build, same size.”

  “And the money? Where does all his money come from?”

  “The church. Our church. Pinto ...Pinto is a priest. A road-man, for our church.”

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  “What church?”

  “Goyathlay’s Throat.”

  “Goyathlay was Bedonkohe Apache. You’re Comanche.”

  “Yeah, but now we’re all part of the same church, all of us, Kiowa, Apache, Comanche. We all serve Goyathlay, who speaks through Peyote himself. Pinto is the new voice of Goyathlay. Pinto made a new way of calling Peyote. Instead of mescal buttons he had something new—datura root, also crystal meth, and this plant called salvia. Pinto used to run a meth lab over in Colorado before the DEA got on to him, and he studied on ways to make Peyote stronger. He found a whole new Peyote to preach with. So the word got around and our church grew. People began to come from everywhere, and Pinto charged a lot for the ceremony. I helped. We made good money.”

  “How?”

  “People will pay a lot to talk with Peyote. Also from their confessions, when they see the god Peyote. Some people talk too much when Peyote is in their hearts. Pinto listens. Later, he tells them that the way to atone for the really bad sins is to give their money to our church. If they don’t give the money, Pinto says that Peyote will come to the sinner’s family, Peyote will tell the family what he did. If their sins are bad enough, the sinners will always pay.”

  “What does this have to do with Moot Gibson?”

  “Like I said, Gibson was a white man who wanted to be a Comanche. He came down here six months ago, from up in Wyoming, he was angry with the U.S. government, they took away his horse farm, whatever, and he wanted to find out how to have magic power against them. He had heard about Goyathlay’s Throat from some Apaches out in New Mexico, and he came here to see about being a part of a sing. Pinto let Gibson into a sing. They shared the new god Peyote. I don’t know exactly what happened, but Gibson said something during the telling of sins, and Pinto went totally nuts.”

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  “What did he do?”

  “He took Gibson out to a hut near here, doped him up, real nice and respectful, got him to talk all about what his sins were—Gibson was like you, he was CIA. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Pinto told me later that Gibson had killed his little sister Jewel and his niece Amber. Down on Interstate 25, maybe ten years ago, back in ninety-seven, they were trying to kill someone else—another Comanche, a woman named Consuelo Goliad. Anyway, Pinto got it all out of Gibson: who the other guys were, where they lived, all except the guy who went into the Jeep and broke her neck. Gibson called him ‘the man in the long blue coat.’ Swore he didn’t know the man’s real name. Said he was called ‘Cicero.’ Like a code name. Cicero. Gibson told Pinto that only Goliad was supposed to die, but things went haywire.

  “Did Gibson name the man who was running the operation?”

  “Somebody named Cole. Bob Cole. Something like that.”

  “And who was the actual killer? The man in the long blue coat?”

  “Cicero was all he could get out of Gibson. Gibson never knew his real name. He wasn’t a full-time member of their unit. Gibson called him ‘the parachute pro.’ Said he wasn’t needed. Pinto talked him into trying to find out Cicero’s real name, said that he couldn’t be pure and find his spirit power unless he atoned for all of his sins.”

  “When was this?”

  “Maybe three months ago. Man, by that time, Gibson was a real head case. Pinto dosed him up almost every day while he was getting the story out of him. Pinto can be real nice, talk low and soft, he can make you think he’s a sweet guy, but he is not a nice guy.”

  “Did Gibson find out who the inside guy was? The man in the long blue coat?”

  Horsecoat shook his head, lifted his palms. “No. And Pinto pushed him hard. Even when he was talking to Peyote himself, the guy had no idea. Pinto told him that there would be no forgiveness

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  without atonement, and that could only happen when all the people who helped to kill Amber and Jewel were dead. But Gibson couldn’t find out. He tried. Gone for days. But there was no way.”

  “That’s not true. The man in the long blue coat is dead.” “I know. Pinto told me. Pinto went to England to find him.” “But you don’t know how Pinto got Cicero’s real name?” “No. Maybe it was something in the wreck?” “What wreck?” “There’s a big old Suburban down by the Apishapa. Been there

  for fucking years. Black. Has a corpse in it. That’s where I found the Ruger, man. Honest. I didn’t know it was illegal. I found it in the wreck.”

  “You found the wreck? Not Pinto?” “No. I found it. I showed it to him later.” Dalton gave the man a long hard look and decided he was telling
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  the truth. It made no sense, but it had the ring of truth. “Okay. Where do I find Pinto?” Horsecoat laughed, a strangled, mirthless rattle in a tight throat. “Find Pinto? Pinto’ll find you, man. He’ll find us both.” “Where’s this wrecked Suburban?” “Like I said. Down there by the Apishapa. About a mile.” “Show me.”

  IRENE WOULDN’T LEAVE Moot Gibson’s grave. When Dalton tried to take her by the collar, she bared her teeth at him, so Dalton left her there. It was deep-blue dark under a sky full of stars by the time they reached the dry wash of the Little Apishapa, a broad gully worn out of the grassland by the meandering course of the creek.

  He stopped the pickup truck at the edge of a drop-off and they got out, Horsecoat walking a little ahead. A low line of sorrel and

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  sage marked the edge of the arroyo. Horsecoat stopped there and looked back at Dalton, his eyes glittering in the glare of Dalton’s flashlight. He extended his arm and pointed down.

  “It’s down there. Been there for ten years.”

  Dalton shone the beam downward into the darkness. The undercarriage of a large SUV, rusted and scaled, four tires coated in mud, part of a side panel that had once been black.

  “You first.”

  Horsecoat led them as they slipped and slid down the bank, holding on to shrubs and skidding on their boot heels. Dalton came up hard against the rusted side of the Suburban. The ground was littered with broken glass, scraps of faded blue cloth, pieces of bone.

  Dalton shone the flashlight beam into the interior of the truck. The skeleton of a large man was hanging upside down in the overturned truck, still strapped in. The skull had dropped off the vertebrae long ago, to be carried away by some large animal, and the torso had been attacked by crows and other foragers. Dalton looked at the rags and bones still suspended from the ceiling and knew that he was looking at the remains of Milo Tillman. He pulled his head out of the truck and stood there, looking at the wreck, while Horse-coat slouched against the bank. Did Milo Tillman get lost while going cross-country to avoid the cops? Did he just blunder into this arroyo and die here?

  Or had he been killed by Porter Naumann, just to seal the case shut. Dalton figured he would never know.

  One truth remained: Porter Naumann was the man in the long blue coat. The killer brought in to make sure Consuelo Goliad died in the accident. That’s what Naumann did for years, before being reassigned to Burke and Single. Fremont’s unit were not trained killers. But in this case they needed one and Langley had provided.

  Dalton had read and reread Barbra Goldhawk’s notes on the ac-

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  cident. It had been witnessed by hundreds of people. A man named Lewis Dolarhyde, one of the witnesses, told the Colorado state police that he had seen a man, a large middle-aged white male, tanned and muscular, with blue eyes and a prominent, sharply beaked nose, very well dressed, wearing a long blue overcoat, coming out of Consuelo Goliad’s wrecked Jeep. The description matched Naumann perfectly.

  Consuelo Goliad’s neck had been snapped, and the EMS crew had noted that there were glove marks on her cheeks, marks still visible in the coating of explosive residue from her deployed air bag. One hand on the cheekbone, the other under the victim’s ear. Set yourself, two or three hard jerks, down and up and down again—a broken neck. Any strong man, any man trained to do it, could accomplish it in seconds.

  He pulled out the fax sheet and held it up to the beam.

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  While he was staring down at the fax, Horsecoat pushed himself

  off the bank and came over to look. “Where’d you get that?” Dalton ignored the question. “What else did you find in this

  truck?” “A big bag, full of papers. And some broken bits of pottery.” “Where is this stuff now?” “The papers were all rotted. I tried to thaw them out, but they

  just turned into mush. What I could read was all numbers—groups

  of numbers—so I just took them out to the trash and dumped them.” “Where?” “Big dump site back of Comanche Station. Covered over years

  ago. Gone. Long gone. Sorry.” “There’s a big peak, in the Front Range. You can just see it from here. Way off in the southwest, but it stands out. What’s it called?”

  “That’s Culebra. Fourteen thousand feet above sea level. Maybe more. Biggest peak in southeastern Colorado. We Comanches call this Culebra country. Snake country. Who did this drawing?”

  “Moot Gibson.” “He drew that?” “Yes.” “When?” “About three months ago.” “That’s Peyote, you know, in the center. But Pinto would never

  have let him draw something like that.” “Why not?” “You never name the roadman.” “The roadman? The priest?” “Yes. His real name is a secret. A sacred secret.” “Is Pinto’s name here?” Horsecoat tapped the sheet. “Yeah. Here . . . and here.” He

  touched the word “hidden” and the word “struggle.”

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  “That’s his name,” he said, speaking in a whisper.

  “Pinto? His given name is Daniel Escondido.”

  “ ‘Lucha’ was the name he took when he was sixteen. Like you say, his original name was Daniel. He named himself Lucha. Lucha is Spanish for the struggle. For the fight. And Escondido means—”

  “Hidden.”

  “Yes. That’s his clan name. They got it from the Mexicans, for killing so many of them and then just slipping away into the grass.”

  “What does this word mean? ‘Deadead’?”

  “I guess that’s for Pinto.”

  “Deadead means Pinto?”

  “No. It means DEA Dead. It’s for those three federal agents who disappeared. Why they sent Pinto to jail. The DEA agents. Pinto liked to say that when they came down here they were DEA and when he left them they were DOA. He strung them up to a big old cottonwood over there by the Huerfano. Naked. Even the woman. Sliced off their eyelids and let the sun roast them. The woman lasted the longest, only because Pinto gave her water. Pinto used her a lot, so Bill Knife says, while she was hanging there, because it made him feel happy to hear her crying like that, her begging not to die, offering him whatever she could think of, praying for mercy. She did stuff to him, took him every which way, at the end Pinto says she told him she really loved him and would never ever tell the cops on him, but she died anyway. Pinto loves to hear people do that, asking for mercy, crying, saying they’ll fuck him, suck him, do whatever he wants, whiny, pitiful, sorry shit like that. Pinto says he likes to breathe in the souls coming out of people while they’re dying, says he can taste them on his tongue, breathe them in like sage smoke. It makes him smile. We used to go look at their bones when we were kids, but Bill Knife scared us off, told us never to go back there again, that it was a dead place, full of angry unhappy spirits.”

  The look on Dalton’s face must have been more revealing than

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  he intended, because Horsecoat shrugged his thin shoulders, raised

  his hands: “I know. I know. That’s what Pinto does.”

  Dalton folded the paper up. “Let’s go.”

  “Where we going?”

  “Back to Moot’s grave. To wait for Pinto.”

  “Man, we can’t do that. I can’t be there.”

  “Why not? You said he’d come for you?”

  “Yeah. He’ll come for both of us.”

  “You’re part of his church. He won’t hurt you.”

  Horsecoat shook his head. “You don’t know him. Pinto’s crazy. If he thinks I talked to you like I did, he’ll kill me too. Bill Knife says Pinto has maggots in his head. I can’t be here, man. Really. I can’t be here.”

  “Then go.”

  Horsecoat looked around the arroyo, and then back at Dalton.

  “I can leave?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I have the Ruger? Just in case Pinto doesn’t believe me?”

  Dalton racked the slide, clea
ring the magazine, and handed the weapon over. Horsecoat clutched it to his chest, as if it were a talisman that could really save him from something like Pinto. He knew that handing the kid a gun was an insane thing to do. Dalton didn’t really care. He was half-mad already. He was the walking dead, and in the land of the half-mad, the walking dead is king. Besides, if the pistol gave Horsecoat the courage to go find Pinto, then it was worth the risk.

  “How do you know I won’t just go tell Pinto where you are?”

  “I think that’s what you should do. Maybe he’ll let you live. You go out there and find him and tell him I’m here waiting.”

  “And you’re just gonna sit there? Let him come for you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’re a dead man.”

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  “Yes. I’m a dead man. You tell Pinto that a dead man wants to see him. Tell him I’m waiting for him. Now go.”

  Horsecoat stared at him for a time, and then turned and ran, vanishing into the sweetgrass. Dalton heard the hissing of his passage through the dry grass, the thud of his running boots. After a while this faded to nothing and then there was only the faint ticking of the truck’s engine cooling and the deep slow beating of his own heart.

  FULL NIGHT; Dalton alone by the rock mound.

  Irene lying asleep a few yards away, her side heaving, twitching in a dog’s dream, her paws jerking as if she were chasing prey. The pickup truck engine had cooled enough to stop ticking long ago. The cold wind had increased, slicing down out of the Rockies, out of Culebra Peak, the jagged knifelike crest of the mountain cutting a black slice out of a sky filled with stars, filled with the wide, slowly undulating pink curtain of the Milky Way. The sweetgrass was hissing and tossing in the wind and a silvery light lay on the land. The air was sharper, colder, carrying the promise of snow.

  Dalton was leaning back on the mound, the rough river stones still giving off some of the day’s heat, his range jacket zipped tight, his collar up, holding the Colt in his left hand and feeling the slender shaft of a disposable hypodermic needle in his right. The needle was filled with Narcan. Maybe it would help. Maybe not. He was hungry and afraid and thinking about Florian’s in Venice, about the light on Saint Mark’s Basin, the taste of cold champagne on a hot afternoon. He did not expect to live through the night, but he found he could not leave. The world needed Pinto dead, and the work had come to him. Irene sat up and sniffed at the wind, whimpering. Dalton stood up and looked to the west, the breeze ruffling his collar as he faced into the wind. He saw a dark eddy in the waving grass.