The Bisti Business

by Don Travis

  Dix Lee was working this holiday. She sat at a desk managing to look delicate in her uniform—well, not delicate maybe, but pretty. She had a couple of John Doe vagrants in lockup and agreed to give me a look at both. Since the FPD doesn’t have its own jail, we got in her unit and dropped down to the Bloomfield Highway heading east. A few miles later, she turned north on Andrea Drive and parked in a lot beside a sprawling dark brown building boasting the flag pole and xeriscaping that seemed to be required of government buildings in high desert climes.

  The San Juan County Adult Detention Center was a 1,000-bed facility that housed inmates for a maximum of 364 days for all of the Four Corners law enforcement authorities, including federal. It took only minutes to determine neither of her John Does was my client’s son, and not much longer to rule out any John Doe inmates placed there by other jurisdictions.

  I was impressed with the center. The place was so new it had not yet acquired the atmosphere of despair and suppressed violence evident in most jails and prisons, although there were the ceaseless noise of rumbling conversations, yelled instructions from the guards, and the clang of metal doors. Those come the moment the first inmates enter the facility. The despair and cruelty and violence would quickly follow.

  As soon as we got back to the FPD parking lot, I thanked Dix and returned to the motel room to wash up and get ready to meet Jazz. My phone buzzed just before I walked out the door. It was Anthony Alfano—the old Anthony Alfano from our first phone call.

  “What the hell are you doing, Vinson?” he bellowed.

  “Looking for your son, Alfano,” I answered in a calm voice.

  “By investigating me?”

  Oh, hell. Well, Charlie had given me fair warning.

  “Why do you think I’m investigating you? You said the FBI had already been around. They always investigate the family in situations like this.”

  “The fuck you say. It’s a private investigator doing the poking around. Last time I heard, the FBI didn’t hire private investigators in Los Angeles. But I know somebody who said he did. I’m paying a sleazebag to investigate myself?”

  “Whoa there, buster. I’m no sleazebag, and I don’t hire sleazebags. Maybe it never occurred to you that someone in your own organization might be responsible for what happened to your son, but it did to me. I hear there’s a power struggle going on over your wife’s money with several people’s fortunes riding on the outcome.”

  “Lando’s not in the company,” Alfano shot back at me. “He opted out. Maybe someday, but right now he’s in school.”

  “Don’t try to snow me. He’s not in the company hierarchy, but he’s sure as hell in the family. I hear his position on the De Falco acquisition is key to the outcome. And before you leap to conclusions, Aggie never said a word about any of this, which pisses me off too. Being up-front would have saved a lot of time and expense. And if you don’t like the way I’m doing things, fire me.”

  The phone went silent a moment. When he spoke again, I heard the worried father, not the indignant wine mogul. “No, keep on it. Looks to me like you’re learning more than the feds at this point. And who knows what the sheriff’s people are doing? By God, if you find out anyone of mine had a hand in this, I’ll kill him myself.”

  “There are other people involved in the acquisition of De Falco besides members of your immediate family. I don’t know how desperate the owners are to sell, and I don’t know the situation with your son-in-law. He stands to make a sizeable commission, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes, and he’s desperate for it.” Alfano’s tone let me know he did not particularly care for his daughter’s husband. Did the Alfano and Sabelito offspring go out of their way to piss off their elders in the choice of mates?

  I PULLED into the Sidewinder’s parking lot late that afternoon just as the sun was pulling everything off its easel and slinging it across the sky in an ostentatious display of color. I desperately hoped Lando Alfano, wherever he was, was enjoying the show, but my faith was getting shaky. I glanced around the crowded lot to see if Bud Yarborough’s truck was there. There were a couple that could have been his, but I wasn’t certain. As I stepped through the door, the feel of sawdust beneath my shoes took me by surprise once again. Not many bars used the stuff anymore. The place was packed with holiday blue-collar revelers.

  The hulking form of Riley Penrod straddled a stool at the bar, and I wondered if he was there to defend against Bud and his bunkmate, Oscar. Jazz stood and motioned me back to the same rear booth Yarborough and his three pals had occupied when Aggie and I last paid the joint a visit. There was someone else sharing the kid’s bench seat.

  Jazz grasped my hand, unleashed his killer smile, and nodded at the man beside him. “This is my brother, Henry Secatero. Henry, this is Mr. Vinson.”

  The Lord made them good in the Secatero and Penrod families. The strong hand that reached out and took mine was attached to a brawny forearm covered with tight, glossy skin that reminded me of a newly minted copper penny. The man’s biceps rippled with the minimal effort of our handshake. His chest threatened to tear the seams from a T-shirt with a Red Power logo. Jazz was “sleek-handsome,” his half brother was “rough trade–handsome.” A menacing air rode his wide shoulders like a cloak, but I did not get the feeling he was a ruffian, merely a cautious man always on the lookout for a racial slight. I judged him to be about ten years older than his brother. Gene’s comment about “local resources” ran through my mind. Was this another one?

  “Mr. Vinson.” His voice came up out of his nether regions. If this guy sang, he would be a bass—or a basso. That conjured a vision of Henry in full regalia banging on a huge buffalo-skin drum and chanting a war song, whipping a clan of dog soldiers into a killing frenzy. His coal black eyes studied me intently, no doubt calculating how much of a risk to his baby brother I represented.

  “Glad you can join us, Henry. Thanks for tipping Jazz off to the parked car. You uncovered a murder.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I hear. Bad stuff.”

  I motioned toward the bar. “I see you brought your uncle as backup, Jazz. Something got you worried?”

  “Naw. I just didn’t want Yarborough and his crew interrupting us.”

  “You want something to eat?”

  “Always,” the kid answered. His brother grunted.

  After we ordered and instructed the waiter to give Riley whatever he wanted, I leaned back in the booth, which was amazingly uncomfortable for a business establishment that prospered when its patrons lingered. “So what do you have for me?”

  Without a word, Henry pulled a black nylon tote from the seat between them. It was a carry-on bag commonly used for airline travel, one with straps to be used as a lightweight backpack. It was an expensive piece.

  “Whoa, where did that come from?” I asked without touching it.

  “That came from old One-Eye Begay’s hogan,” Henry growled. “This came from a pawnshop in Shiprock.” He placed a soft leather toilet kit with the initials “OSA” embossed in gold on the table.

  There was not much doubt what those initials stood for—Orlando Selvanus Alfano.

  CREATED BY JUTOH - PLEASE REGISTER TO REMOVE THIS LINE

  Chapter 21

  JAZZ LEANED back in the Sidewinder booth and laughed aloud, clearly getting a kick out of my reaction. “There’s probably more of Lando’s stuff spread all over the reservation, but this is what we’ve found so far. Good work, huh?”

  “Damned good work, but I wish you’d left them where you found them so we could let the FBI recover them.”

  “Those guys?” Henry snorted. “They’d just send the tribal police to get them—if they ever found out about them.”

  “What’s the story?” I asked.

  Henry nodded at the black nylon bag. “One-Eye’s a superstitious old goat. Claims he found this in an arroyo south of his place. Says a shape-shifter’s been hanging around, but a witch doesn’t leave stuff like this laying in the sand. What he saw was a flesh a
nd blood human. Maybe this Lando dude.”

  “So he took the bag home with him? What did he intend doing with it?”

  “Says he found stuff scattered around in the sand. He put it back in the bag and took it home. It was all shirts and pants, you know, clothes. One of the shirts has that Alfano guy’s initials on the pocket, so we figured it was his bag. Anyway, some of the duds looked like they’d fit one of One-Eye’s great-grandsons, so he sent word to the chapter house for his kinfolks to come by. That’s how I heard about it. When Jazz came putzing around, I took him down to see the old man.”

  “Cost us forty bucks to get it,” Jazz said.

  “Okay, I’ll reimburse you. Don’t suppose you got a receipt.”

  Jazz held up a tattered scrap of lined tablet paper. The writing was clearly not that of an old man, but the barely legible “BEGAY” at the bottom was. More a narrative than a mere receipt, it set out—presumably in One-Eye’s own words—how and where the bag was found and stated he’d turned it over to Jasper Penrod for forty dollars.

  “It cost us to ransom the shaving kit too,” Jazz added. “The pawnshop guy wanted a hundred, but we got him down to sixty. Got a receipt for that one too. Old Lando had some good stuff. The electric razor in there musta cost him a couple of hundred bucks.”

  As I sat staring at the items, Jazz grew impatient. “Aren’t you gonna go through them. You know, looking for clues?”

  I shook my head. “No. I’m going to call Agent Gaines and let him do the looking. So many people have touched them already they’re probably not going to tell us anything, but we should at least let the lab try.”

  “Hey, man,” Henry objected. “My fingerprints are all over those things. Inside and out. Both of ours. We looked through the stuff.”

  “That’s okay. You’re the guys who recovered the items. You’ll have to tell your story, but that’s probably the end of it.”

  Henry stirred uncomfortably, the muscles in his torso roiling like angry water currents beneath his shirt. “Didn’t intend to get mixed up with those guys. They’re bad news.”

  “You have any reason to be worried, Henry? Let’s lay the cards on the table. Did you find these items the way you said?”

  Both men nodded.

  “Did you keep anything from either bag?” They shook their heads and I continued. “Are the feds looking at either one of you for anything, whether or not it’s connected to the Alfano disappearance?”

  In response to an “uh-uh” and a “no way,” respectively, I relaxed. “Then there’s no problem. This might even earn you some brownie points with the local FBI agent.”

  “I just don’t like being on their radar screen, man,” Jazz’s brother muttered.

  The waiter interrupted with our meal. Jazz had ordered a Sidewinder Gut-Buster, a massive cheeseburger with spicy nachos on the side. Henry had gone practical and ordered a sirloin with baked potato. I settled for a bowl of green chili stew and flour tortillas. I don’t know what Riley Penrod had because he continued to sit across the room at the bar. Jazz said his uncle was expecting a lady friend.

  We ate in relative silence, except for some personal joshing back and forth between the half brothers. It was almost comical the way Henry periodically swept the room with a hostile scowl on the lookout for predators. At the end of each of these glances, that pensive gaze always ended up on me. It was all I could do to keep from verbally renouncing all prurient interest in Jazz, but the Bard’s warning about protesting too much put a rein on my tongue.

  After finishing our meal, we adjourned to my car to take care of the financial details. Flashing a wad of money in a place like the Sidewinder was as risky as propositioning one of the roustabouts. I replaced what they’d spent on redeeming Lando’s bags and then hired Jazz for another week. For good measure I made the same deal with Henry. After asking them to try to find other articles belonging to Lando, I cautioned that the FBI would be all over the place looking for the missing man, but I wanted to get to him first.

  They assured me they’d get on it right away, and then we went our separate ways. Henry roared out of the parking lot on a new Harley, making me wonder if he worked at one of the coal mines on the reservation. Those were said to be good jobs.

  Before following Jazz’s Wrangler out onto the highway, I phoned the FBI office. It was closed, of course, but I left a detailed message telling Gaines of the objects I now had in my possession and how they were obtained. Then I drove back to the motel wondering if I had the self-discipline to keep from going through the contents of the bags. I didn’t, of course, but I used my knuckles to root around in it so as not to leave fingerprints. I didn’t worry about the ones on the handles. The absence of prints there would have raised suspicions. I found only clothing and personal items, nothing to help locate the missing man.

  I left Lonzo a message saying I intended to turn the recovered articles over to the FBI. Then in the middle of considering whether to call Alfano and report the find of his son’s clothing or wait until I had something more substantial, Aggie phoned.

  “I’m flying out tomorrow and ought to be there around three,” he said. “Will you be able to pick me up, or should I rent a car?”

  “I’ll pick you up. The big acquisition’s all taken care of?” I asked.

  “No, it’s on hold.”

  “My guess is your mother won’t consider the financing while she’s worried about Lando.” If I expected surprise, I was disappointed.

  “The old man said you were on top of things. Yeah, she’s digging in her heels until she knows Lando’s okay.”

  “Which is probably good news for you.”

  “The only thing better would be to find Lando alive and well.”

  “Even if he backs the purchase of De Falco?”

  “He won’t.” Aggie’s response was delivered in a flat, even tone.

  I spent five minutes telling him about the tote and the toilet kit, but after hanging up and turning out the light, I lay in the darkness worrying about whether I’d made a mistake. It was hard to know who to trust in this situation. Paranoia is a silent partner in my business.

  GAINES CALLED while I was at breakfast the next morning and invited me to visit him at his office. I took my time finishing the meal before driving over. He had company. Lonzo Joe and Larry Plainer were both there waiting for me too. I dropped the Trail’s End laundry bags containing Lando’s recovered items on the desk.

  Gaines just looked at the bags without touching anything. “Want to tell us about it?”

  “I told everything to the telephone last night so you’d have a recording of it. Don’t have much to add, but if you have questions, ask away.”

  “You bet we’ve got questions,” Plainer started but leaned back in his chair when Gaines raised a hand.

  “That was smart using the Penrod kid and his brother out on the reservation,” Gaines said. “What made you think of it?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? They’re the ones who found Santillanes.”

  “Yeah, but Santillanes was out there because that’s where the landing strip is. The Alfano kid’s Porsche was found south of Farmington, nowhere near the reservation.”

  “True, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a reservation connection. Besides, Jazz Penrod gets around town while his brother listens for gossip on the reservation. It seemed a natural to me.”

  Gaines gazed at me steadily. “We’ll have to talk to them, you know.”

  “Already told them to expect a call from you.”

  He nodded at the laundry bags. “Did anything in there tell you something you didn’t already know?”

  I hedged. “The kids went through it, as did the old man who found the nylon bag—and probably the pawnbroker who bought the toilet kit—so who knows what’s been taken out of them. Penrod and Secatero say they didn’t remove anything but admitted looking through the bags to see if they could find a clue to Lando’s whereabouts.”

  “Not much doubt about the toilet kit being
Alfano’s. It’s got his initials embossed on it, but why do you think the black bag is his?” Lonzo asked.

  “An initialed shirt pocket. And it’s the kind of clothing he wears. Yeah, I unzipped it and took a look inside without disturbing anything. And it’s expensive. I’m certain it belongs to my client’s son.”

  “Have you talked to the pawnbroker over in Shiprock?”

  “No. Figured we’d do that together.”

  “You leave that to us.”

  “Agent Gaines, my job is to find Orlando Alfano, and I intend to do my job. I am well aware you will grill the moneylender in Shiprock, but I’m going to speak to him too. I just figured it would be simpler to do it together.”

  His eyes studied me coolly for a moment before he stood. “Let’s go.”

  I almost laughed aloud at the dismay painted on Plainer’s face, but the BLM agent had been reined in once, so he kept his comments to himself. Lonzo smiled quietly and gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

  I rode with Gaines, while Lonzo followed in a county unit with Plainer as his passenger. Gaines did not seem inclined to talk, so I concentrated on the view outside the window. The trip wasn’t long, but it was interesting. We stayed on State Highway 64, bypassing the town of Kirtland, founded in the 1880s by the Latter-Day Saints and presently boasting a population of around 6,000—and Fruitland. I didn’t know much about Fruitland, but Upper Fruitland across the San Juan River was predominately a Navajo town. One of these days, I was going to visit both.

  Before long the huge volcanic plug called Shiprock hove into view like a massive, oceangoing vessel improbably landlocked on the high desert plain. A bustling commercial center bearing the same name sprawled across the mesa about seven miles short of the monolith.