The Bisti Business

by Don Travis

  Lando and Dana were driving willy-nilly all over the place, and New Mexico is a big state—over 121,000 square miles. They’d passed through Gallup and drove another 130 miles east to Albuquerque. Then they headed west to Gallup again after leaving the Continental Divide Truck Stop. Well, that made sense; the Inter Tribal Ceremonial hadn’t kicked off until that weekend. Later they had checked back in at the Sheraton and still held a room there, making it their base of operations in this driving vacation. These two young men were wrapped up in a love affair—a threesome that included an exotic sports car. And as strikingly handsome as the two men were, the orange Porsche was what really caught people’s attention.

  I quickly forgot the Alfanos and their problems when I returned home that evening to find Paul sitting shirtless on the couch in the den in cutoff denims with his bare feet propped on the coffee table. It took some effort to turn my attention from him to the rerun he was watching on television; a rerun of the Texas Rangers walloping the Baltimore Orioles 30 to 3. August 22, 2007 would go down in baseball history for the record number of runs by a single team in one game. Better headlines than the more usual reporting of the deadly war in Iraq that didn’t seem to want to stop.

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  Chapter 5

  THE MORNING’S first sip of scalding, Splenda-sweetened java laced with Coffee-Mate had not yet reached my gullet when the cell phone went off. The number was not familiar, but the California area code meant it was likely connected to my newest case. The deep baritone was likewise unrecognizable.

  “Mr. Vinson? I hope I’m not imposing by calling this early on your personal telephone, but my father asked me to contact you. My name is Aggie Alfano.”

  “Let me guess, you’re Orlando’s brother.”

  “That’s right, his older brother. We were just contacted by the company monitoring the Magellan GPS device in Lando’s Porsche. I have the latest coordinates.”

  “Pacific Coast time is an hour behind us. Someone’s been working late—or early.”

  “When Carl Brasser gets involved, people tend to forget normal working hours.”

  “That’s good to know. Okay, shoot.”

  Aggie rattled off a meaningless string of numbers and then brought them into perspective. “That puts him in Taos.”

  “Great. I’ll phone the local police and head right up.”

  “Good. I’m not far from the airport now. I have my own plane and can be there in about three hours.”

  “That’s not necessary. I’ll pick up your brother and deliver him to the family.”

  There was a brief pause. “Lando can be a handful, especially if he thinks the old man is interfering in his life. I think I’d better come out and give you a hand.”

  “Your call. Taos is small, but it’s a tourist spot, so they have a decent airport.”

  “I’m familiar with the place. I’ve landed there before.”

  “Has Lando?”

  “Oh, yes, he’s visited several times. He’s into art in a big way.”

  As a lifelong history buff fascinated by New Mexico’s small villages and multiple cultures, I knew Taos was awash in galleries. We made arrangements to meet at the police station and terminated the call.

  A new wrinkle. An older brother. Alfano had said “my son is missing” when we first spoke. Well, I suppose not everyone draws a family tree right off the bat.

  Paul walked into the dinette in the denim cutoffs he wore around the house. His dark brown, almost black, hair was rumpled, and his Hershey-colored eyes still looked fuzzy with sleep. A tiny dragon tattoo on his left pec performed calisthenics as he placed a cup of unsweetened black coffee on the table. I liked watching that tattoo, that pec.

  “Business?” he asked.

  I nodded. “The missing students from California. Got their GPS coordinates. Taos.”

  “Good. I hope they’re floating down the Rio Grande in the Taos Box having the time of their lives.”

  “Me too, but I’m beginning to lose faith in the fantasy these are two lovers so wrapped up in one another they lost track of time. I’m going to have to go up there—to Taos.”

  “I hope you’re wrong and they’re off somewhere having a ball. Don’t be gone long, okay?” Paul glanced across at the kitchen clock and snatched a quick sip of coffee. “Whoops, I gotta hit the shower. I’m gonna be late for class.”

  He rushed down the hallway, his broad-shouldered, lean-hipped, five-foot-ten frame evoking images of a powerful physique knifing through the water in a race for the finish line. Paul enjoyed soccer and played a mean game of sidewalk basketball, but swimming was his passion. Swimming and dancing. After class—he was a graduate student in journalism at the University of New Mexico—he would go straight to his job as a swimming instructor at the North Valley Country Club, which is where I first met him.

  Reluctantly turning back to business, I placed three calls before leaving the house, four if you count the one to the office to let Hazel know I wouldn’t be in today. After Gene Enriquez agreed to contact the Taos cops, I dialed a local flying service to arrange for a charter and then phoned the Taos Police Department directly.

  Gene had contacted Officer Gilbert Delfino, who was awaiting my call. The Magellan coordinates were not in Taos itself but in the little settlement of El Segundo north of town. Delfino had already asked the Taos County Sheriff’s Office to detain the automobile, although he added a caution that the good citizens of Taos and villages in the vicinity were known for a deep-rooted reluctance to cooperate with the law. It was difficult, he noted, to locate someone who did not want to be found in those mountains. Delfino agreed to pick me up at the airport.

  Jim Gray and his Cessna Skycatcher were available, but because of the short notice, there was a delay in getting it serviced and ready for flight. Jim, a lanky six-footer with a small beer belly, had been both a fixed-wing and whirlybird jockey in Vietnam and returned from the experience a little traumatized—more from what he observed on the ground than in the air. After leaving the military, he flew with a couple of charter services for a number of years until he saved enough to buy the Cessna and go into business for himself. He was a careful and competent pilot I used for local flights, so I settled comfortably into the right-hand seat of the Cessna—a good hour and a half after talking to Aggie Alfano.

  We encountered turbulence as the little plane lifted off from the Double Eagle Airport on the west side of town and headed straight up the Rio Grande. The browns and reds and grays of the desert terrain turned a monotonous dun as we gained altitude, broken only by darker wrinkles of dry washes known as arroyos, the double black ribbons of Interstate 25, and the dull sheen of the river—itself somewhat brown. The Rio is classified as a “dirty river,” meaning it carries high concentrations of silt on its way to the Gulf of Mexico. The green-shrouded slopes of the Jemez Mountains to the west provided a splash of color, as did the Sangre de Cristos to the north.

  With a maximum range of 470 nautical miles, plus a thirty-minute reserve fuel supply, the Cessna would not need to set down before reaching our destination. Taos is a 132-mile trip by car, and at a cruising speed of 129 mph, we would arrive in something under an hour.

  “Quite a view, huh?” Jim asked. “I never get tired of it.”

  Feeling a kinship with a soaring eagle, I took in the panorama. “Is that weather off to the west going to cause us any heartburn?” Bright bolts of lightning strobed the black sky on the distant horizon.

  “I checked before we lifted off. It’s moving north-northeast, so I doubt we’ll be bothered.”

  “Feel free to put down somewhere if we are.” I glanced down at the river again. “It’s really amazing how the Rio Grande changes character. Around Albuquerque it roams around in a broad channel made for a bigger river.”

  “You can blame that on the dams,” Jim observed. “When the Rio Grande was declared a wild and scenic river, it flooded regularly. Then they put in all the dams. The way
I look at it, they put an end to the flooding all right, but the river and the Bosque are paying the price. They’re both slowly dying.” The Bosque was a two-hundred-mile swath of cottonwood forest lining both banks of the Rio.

  Above Santa Fe, the water flowing beneath the plane picked up energy, shimmering in the sunlight as it rushed over rocks on its fall from the high country. The farther north we traveled, the wilder the river became. Soon it was white-water rafting country. A few miles below Taos, the true might and determination of the river become apparent as it raced down long boulder gardens to spill out of the black volcanic canyons of the Taos Box. From above, the river appeared to sink, but in reality the terrain rose on its climb north toward Colorado.

  Over the eons gravity and friction and the sheer power of water molecules had carved a deep crevasse through the hard basalt of the Taos Plateau. The Rio Grande Gorge Bridge spanned that spectacular canyon ten miles west-northwest of Taos. We circled over the awesome 1,280-foot, cantilevered steel-and-concrete marvel of modern engineering as we lined up for a landing at the town’s small strip.

  Taos claims a 6,000-year history based on arrowheads, potsherds, and pictographs left by nomadic hunter-gatherers. The town takes its name from the older Taos Pueblo, a massive, multistoried, prehistory apartment complex of Tiwa-speaking Native Americans. Both the town and the Pueblo are cultural as well as tourist draws. Dozens of Hollywood films, documentaries, and television commercials have been filmed there ever since the 1940s.

  Jim had radioed the tower well before touching down at the small municipal airport, and Officer Delfino met the plane, as promised. He turned out to be a police officer with more than a touch of the local blood. Standing five foot six in his boots with coarse black hair not quite long enough to wear in the traditional bun but shaggier than most lawmen, he projected a calm competence as we shook hands. It would not be wise to provoke this man. His hatchet face wore an air of serious determination, an impression reinforced by his extraordinarily broad shoulders and deep chest.

  “Mr. Vinson, we might have a problem,” he said. “The sheriff’s people couldn’t find the Porsche in El Segundo, but a unit spotted it on the road. There’s a cruiser on its tail right now.”

  “Do you know where it is at the moment?”

  “Not far to the west of us, as a matter of fact.” He motioned with his chin. “Headed for Agua Amarga… or in that direction, anyway.”

  “That’ll take them over the gorge, right?”

  “They’ll cross over in a few minutes.”

  “Maybe they’re just going sightseeing. You know, stand on the bridge and toss rocks into the gorge like all tourists do.”

  His lips pulled into a frown. “Maybe, but somehow I doubt it.”

  “I expect they’re out of your jurisdiction by now.”

  “The town and the county have a reciprocal arrangement, so I have permission for us to join the chase. If it gets too bad, I expect we’ll have to call in Tom Duggin. He’s the state police trooper up here.”

  “Well,” I said, “let’s get going, unless you think the Cessna might make a good spotter for the sheriff’s people.”

  He eyed the machine with evident interest. “Can’t hurt.”

  He raised the sheriff’s department on his cruiser’s radio while I prepped Jim. Within minutes we took off with the Taos policeman occupying the right-hand seat while I crammed my carcass into the baggage storage cavity behind the two men. Delfino would have fit much more comfortably in the small space, but he knew the territory and I didn’t. He was of more value as a spotter in the front.

  The countryside east of the airport is relatively flat and open, so automobile traffic was clearly visible. Almost immediately we saw a county car, lights flashing, on the road ahead of us. Leading the sheriff’s cruiser by almost a mile was a blur of color that was undoubtedly Orlando Alfano’s orange Boxster. Both vehicles had already crossed the gorge.

  “These guys aren’t fugitives, are they?” Delfino asked. “I thought we were just locating them for a family matter.”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “So why’re they running?”

  “I don’t know. Have two Anglo guys from California had any trouble around Taos in the last few days?”

  “There’s no record of Alfano or Norville in the area, period. I checked every motel in the vicinity after the Albuquerque police called. If they were here, they didn’t leave any tracks.”

  “Then how did Alfano’s car get here?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, but there it is right down there. Uh-oh,” Delfino said, “it turned off the road. Hope our guys see it.”

  “They’re still back around the curve. They won’t see the maneuver unless the dust gives the Porsche away.”

  Delfino asked Jim if he could buzz the cruiser and try to alert them.

  “I can do better than that if you know the county frequency.” Jim reached for his radio dial.

  Within seconds, Delfino was talking to his compadres. By that time, they had passed the point where the Porsche had left the main road. Before the cruiser could reverse direction, the orange car regained the highway, heading back toward Taos.

  “You want me to distract them?” Jim asked.

  Delfino shook his head. “No, they don’t realize we’re a spotter. Let’s let this play out.”

  “Here they come.” I nodded at the county car now in hot pursuit. “But I doubt they have the muscle to overtake the Porsche.”

  “Maybe not, but we can keep them in sight from up here,” Delfino replied.

  The occupants of the fleeing car were obviously aware of the posse on their tail. The vehicle hugged the ground as it took off like it had been goosed in the rear by a hotshot. The erratic way the car raced down the road made me question if an experienced driver was at the wheel.

  “We got him now.”

  Delfino pointed ahead of us. The Porsche rapidly approached the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge where a second sheriff’s vehicle sat in the middle of the span, blocking the fugitives’ escape. Even from this distance, we saw officers herding tourists off the walkways and observation platforms of the bridge.

  “Christ!” Jim muttered. “Those guys better slow down.”

  Delfino grabbed the radio mike and shouted warnings to the sheriffs’ deputies. Belatedly the Porsche tried to stop, but it was traveling too fast. Skidding sideways, the car almost went over. Then it left the roadway short of the bridge, careening through a vacant rest area and sideswiping a stone picnic shelter. Now totally out of control, the Porsche crashed through the fenced area at the brink of the gorge. We let out a collective groan as it hurtled out into space.

  Jim banked over the canyon to watch the automobile take flight. It free-fell a couple hundred feet before striking the side of the gorge, tearing out a sizeable chunk of the wall. From our perspective it looked as if the car dropped in slow motion, tumbling over and over before smashing into the bottom of the gorge. There was no dramatic explosion, merely an awful finality as the machine appeared to disintegrate like a toy automobile smashed beneath a child’s heel.

  Delfino and Jim crossed themselves and muttered a Hail Mary, bringing home the awful, tragic reality of the last few moments. This was no movie stunt. Someone had just died.

  Oh, hell! What would I tell Alfano?

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  Chapter 6

  I ELECTED to tell Anthony Alfano nothing for the moment. Although no one could possibly have survived that fall into the canyon, I wanted to confirm the identities of any bodies in the wreckage before informing the man his son was dead. Besides, Lando’s older brother was on his way.

  The Cessna returned to the airport where we recovered Officer Delfino’s cruiser and started for the bridge. We hadn’t made it to the highway before a high-winged, dual engine Mitsubishi Marquise lined up for a landing, so I asked Delfino to turn back. We watched the craft touch down in a perfect landing and shudder to a ha
lt with plenty of runway to spare.

  “That’s a good plane for this airport,” Delfino observed. “Good airspeed and can land on a postage stamp. Short takeoff too. My granddaddy said that’s the same outfit that built those old World War II planes that dropped bombs on them in the Pacific.”

  The Mitsubishi taxied up to the terminal and went through its shutdown procedure. Eventually a tall, lean man about my age cracked the hatch and stepped down onto the asphalt. It had to be Aggie Alfano; he resembled the picture of Lando in my pocket—same dark hair, deep eyes, strong chin. I stepped forward.

  “Mr. Alfano?”

  He turned at the sound of my voice and started toward me. “Mr. Vinson.”

  “BJ, please.”

  “BJ, I’m Aggie.”

  “Someday you’ll have to enlighten me as to what ‘Aggie’ stands for.”

  The grin was crooked and infectious. “The old man has a wry sense of humor. It’s Aquila Felix. Happy Eagle. Do you blame me for answering to Aggie?”

  “Hell, no. I’m Burleigh J. Vinson. Blame me for going by BJ? This is Officer Gilbert Delfino of the Taos Police Department.”

  “Sir.” Delfino accepted a handshake and then cleared his throat with a glance at me.

  I took the hint. “We’ve got a situation, and it’s serious.”

  Aggie heard us out and then strode to Delfino’s police car. “How fast can we get there?”

  “Just a few minutes,” Delfino replied. “But there won’t be anything to see yet. They’ll need to get some rafts in the water upstream. Either that or some climbers and equipment over the rim.”

  “I’m a climber,” Aggie announced. “I’ll get to him. I saw the people on the bridge when I came over. I just didn’t know they were all looking down at my brother.”

  “We don’t know that,” I cautioned.

  “It was his car, wasn’t it?”

  I nodded. “Not much doubt about that.”