The Bisti Business

by Don Travis

  “They’re could-be’s. You know, maybe’s. Not actual identifications. Trouble is they’re two different guys.”

  “Did you see either one of them?” I knew Jazz would recognize Lando.

  “Uh-uh. We’ve been nosing around and came up with these possibilities. Funny thing, neither one of them was on the rez. They’re in Farmington.”

  “Where in Farmington?”

  “There’s a viaduct west of town. Homeless guys hang out underneath there. You know, sleep and eat and talk. We hear there are two guys who match Lando’s description—more or less.”

  “What do you mean, more or less?” I asked.

  “Unshaven. Dirty. Ragged. But either one could be Lando.”

  Aggie popped up from his seat. “Let’s go.”

  “Too early,” Henry said. “They won’t start gathering until later in the evening. They’re out scrounging something to eat right now. And… uh, well, we think one of them took off already.”

  “A couple of men came around, and the dude we talked to said they made one of the guys real nervous,” Jazz explained. “Claims he took off for Utah.”

  So the FBI and the Sheriff’s Department were on the job after all. “This contact’s sure the man was headed for Utah?”

  “That’s what he claims,” Henry said.

  “Who is this source?”

  “The guy we talk to down there’s called Shifty,” Jazz said. “He’s a vet that got messed up in some war and then got fed up with the military docs. Took off to make it on his own. Most of the time he gives you the straight stuff, but sometimes he goes off his rocker. You can usually tell when he’s that way.”

  “And this is your hot lead?” Aggie scoffed.

  Henry leveled a look at him. “How many leads do you have?”

  “And he was okay when you spoke to him?” I asked Jazz. “This Shifty, I mean?”

  “Yeah. He was lucid.”

  “What about the other lead? Same source?”

  “Uh-huh, Shifty again. I showed him the picture you gave me, and he told us about the two guys that might be Lando. Like I said, one of them took off for Utah or somewhere, but the second Lando’s still around, so far as Shifty knows. Although he hasn’t seen the guy in a day or two.”

  We took time to eat, although Aggie didn’t touch much of his plate. I understood he was anxious to be off. So was I, but Henry’s assessment was right on target. We needed patience for the moment.

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  Chapter 23

  EVENING WAS descending as Aggie and I trailed Jazz’s Wrangler south on a side street that dipped down to skirt a large arroyo. There were already half a dozen homeless men and women sitting in the shadow of a gray concrete bridge that soared overhead. The windswept sage and rabbit bush appeared lush in the twilight—an illusion. A campfire danced in a ring of stones at one end of a bare patch of ground littered with trash. The air, still oppressive, was softening as the sun retired over the horizon.

  Jazz and Henry bailed out of the Jeep and stood waiting for us. The half-dozen vagrants seemed to accept the two of them okay, but Aggie and I caused some agitation as we approached. Two of the group hastily vanished into the scrub on the opposite side of the arroyo. One of them was clearly a woman despite the dungarees and man’s shirt camouflaging her figure; the other looked to be considerably older than Lando.

  “Hey, Shifty,” Jazz greeted a balding man with a florid complexion sitting cross-legged by himself, well away from the fire. The shoulders had probably been beefy back when he was doing calisthenics and marching over rugged mountain trails. Now they were thin and knobby with bone. Pale, delicate hands did not match the rest of him. Eyes like steel balls hid in a mass of wrinkles in an otherwise youngish face. Too old for the Iraq war. I pegged him as a Desert Storm veteran suffering from Gulf War syndrome.

  “What’s going down, Jazz? Who’s that with you? You know I don’t like outsiders.”

  “They’re friends.” Jazz squatted beside the man, his clean jeans and T-shirt a sharp contrast to Shifty’s tattered olive-green field jacket and ragged desert camos. “They’re all right. They’re looking for that guy.”

  “Hello, Henry,” Shifty said as if just noticing Jazz’s companion. “What’s up?”

  “Like Jazz said, we’re looking for that guy.”

  “What guy?”

  “The one we talked to you about,” Jazz said patiently. “You feeling okay? Need anything to eat? I got a chocolate bar.”

  The ball bearing eyes, almost hidden by lazy lids, turned greedy. “A big one?”

  “Giant size,” Jazz assured him, handing over a Kit Kat.

  We lost Shifty for a couple of minutes while he clawed open the wrapping and stuffed his mouth, gulping the candy as if afraid someone stronger or hungrier might take it away from him. His head whipped from side to side, on guard for the enemy. When one of the other vagrants started for us, Jazz lifted his hands to show they were empty.

  “I got no more, man. That’s all there is.”

  Muttering to himself, the interloper, younger and healthier-looking than Shifty, turned away.

  Our homeless vet cleaned his lips with the sleeve of a grimy jacket and licked his fingers before facing us again. “You ain’t got nothing to drink, do you?” His expression at the shake of Jazz’s head said he hadn’t really expected one.

  “This man wants to ask you some questions.” Jazz motioned me forward. “His name is Mr. Vinson, and he’s a friend of the guy who’s missing. He thinks his friend is in trouble. You understand?”

  Shifty flinched at my approach, but Jazz’s hand on his arm seemed to suppress the man’s flight response. Cautiously I held out the picture of Lando, but the homeless man didn’t bother to look at it.

  “You pulling my leg, Jazz?” Shifty asked. “That fella you looking for’s standing right behind you. Where’d you get yourself all cleaned up, Young’un? They give you them new duds?”

  Encouraged by Shifty’s mistake, I said, “No, that’s not the missing man. That’s his brother. When did you see him last? Your friend, I mean.”

  “Young’un keeps to hisself. Don’t talk to nobody. I tried to be sociable, but he wasn’t having none of it. Ever notice how some fellas is suspicious of everbody? Well, that’s him.”

  Aggie stepped forward and started to speak, but I held up my hand. It wouldn’t take much to spook the guy, and we needed every bit of information he had.

  “Tell me, Shifty, does this fellow have a name? Lando, maybe?”

  “Never heard of no Lando. Never heard his name, neither. I just call him Young’un on account of that’s the way he is. You know, young. You could tell he don’t belong out here.”

  “Where does Young’un sleep?” I asked.

  Shifty licked his lips with a thick tongue, searching for a residual taste of chocolate. “Right over yonder by that concrete support.” He reinforced the statement with a nod of his head.

  I caught Henry’s eyes, and he quietly moved away in that direction. Aggie followed him a moment later.

  “When did you see him last?”

  “Been a coupla days. Maybe three.”

  “Do you know where he would go? Is there another place where people congregate?”

  “Couple. But he’d be more likely to go off by hisself somewhere. He got jumpy.”

  “Of what?” Jazz asked.

  “Them guys asking questions?”

  When I asked if he knew who the men were, Shifty snorted. “Everbody knows those guys. One was wearing a suit.” Shifty leaned close and lowered his voice. I was grateful for the waft of chocolate veiling the odors that came with him. “Spies.”

  “Spies? Spies for who?”

  “The government, course. CIA. Seen a lot of them over in the desert. Mean bastards. Them first two claimed they was just lawmen, but they didn’t fool me. That other one, he was better at it, but he was the same.”

  “What other one? How many men
have been around asking questions?”

  “Three that I seen. But with spies, you don’t never know. Hell, you could be spies too.” With that thought, he leaned back to give me a hard look.

  “No, we’re Young’un’s friends and family, and we’re worried about him.”

  Henry and Aggie returned, shaking their heads. They had found nothing. I turned back to Shifty, who was getting more nervous by the moment. Before long he would break. I managed to extract the information that Young’un had been hurt. He had a crusted scab on his face from a fall or a beating, and Shifty figured it for a beating. He didn’t think the wound was serious, but allowed as to how that might have been why the kid was acting screwy.

  “Shifty, just to be clear, this Young’un was the one who resembled this man standing here, right? You told Jazz about another man too. Remember?”

  “What other’n? You mean Young’un?”

  “No, we just talked about Young’un. I mean the other man.”

  Shifty’s features twisted. “That’s what I’m saying. Young’un.”

  I tumbled. “You called him Young’un too?”

  Shifty cackled. “That’s good. Young’un Two.”

  I accepted his misunderstanding of my words. “Yes, Young’un Two.” I reached back and tugged Aggie’s arm until he moved up beside me. “Concentrate now, Shifty. Which one of them resembled this man—Young’un One or Young’un Two?”

  But Shifty was off on his own tangent. “Didn’t like him. Wasn’t friendly. That Young’un Two was hiding something.” He gave his rooster crow again. “Ain’t we all? But he was different.”

  “Where did this Young’un sleep?”

  “All around. Never went to the same place twice. Moved around and kept his nose to the air. Always sniffing like he was smelling trouble in the wind.”

  “You said he went to Utah. How do you know if he wasn’t friendly?” I asked.

  “Heard him mumbling to hisself about Salt Lake City a coupla times. That’s in Utah, ain’t it? And when that last man showed up asking questions, he like to of blowed a gasket. He was scared, he was. Snuck off with his tail between his legs before the man got out of his car.”

  “Okay, but think, Shifty. Which one resembled my friend here?”

  It was hopeless. We spent fifteen minutes squeezing a few more tidbits out of the addled man before giving up and retreating to Jazz’s Wrangler.

  The “suit” had obviously been Gaines. The second man, Lonzo Joe. But was the third man Santillanes, or was he someone on the trail of this other Young’un? Of course, he could also have been BLM Agent Plainer doing some snooping on his own. After discussing the possibilities, we decided that even though Shifty’s facts were open to question, we had to run down both leads. Since the second fugitive might have been headed for Salt Lake, Aggie reluctantly agreed to fly up the next morning and see if he could find anything at that end. I used the cell phone to call a PI I knew up there who agreed to help Aggie search the homeless hangouts in the area. Jazz and I would start the search for the first Young’un in town while Henry would put his nose to the ground on the reservation.

  Rather than dump money on Shifty, which he would probably spend on booze or drugs, we decided Jazz and Henry would take him to a cheap motel and pay for a week’s lodging. Shifty would probably shower and wash his clothes and maybe stay a night or two, but sooner or later, his fears—real or imaginary—would prevail and send him fleeing back beneath the viaduct where he felt safe from the society that had first used and then failed him.

  My nerve ends crackled when the man asked a plaintive question as Jazz and Henry took him firmly by the arms and loaded him into the Wrangler.

  “You turning me over to the CIA? Please, man, I don’t want nothing to do with them bad asses. They do awful things to a man.”

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  Chapter 24

  AFTER DELIVERING Aggie to the Four Corners Regional Airport the next morning for his run up to Salt Lake City, I stopped by the local FBI office. Gaines surprised me; he was in.

  “Vinson,” he said in his mortician’s voice when I entered his august quarters. “I was thinking about calling you.”

  “What’s up?”

  “You first. What’s on your mind?”

  His face remained impassive as I described the recent conversation with Shifty, although his eyes flickered, confirming we had gotten a lot more out of the man than he had. But then Shifty thought he was CIA looking for an excuse to throw him into a bottomless pit.

  “Maybe I ought to alert the Salt Lake office,” he said when I finished. “You know, to give Mr. Alfano a hand in locating this fugitive who might or might not be his brother.”

  “Your call. I gave him the name of a good PI who can take him to the right places. Now, what do you have for me?”

  “We found Orlando Alfano’s billfold.”

  “Where?”

  “In the back pocket of a local punk.”

  Gaines had put out an alert on Lando’s credit cards and got a hit on a charge two days ago. Unfortunately it was at a small service station without surveillance cameras, so all he got was a description of the young man who had filled up his tank with Lando’s Visa. The cashier’s description didn’t even come close to Lando. This morning, Gaines got another call, and this time the mercantile store had a good picture of “Orlando Alfano.” He turned out to be a petty thief with dishwater-blond hair and sky-blue eyes named Shirttail Bob Hawkins, who claimed he found the wallet in a back alley.

  “But that’s not the truth, is it?”

  “No,” Gaines replied. “Shirttail rolled what he thought was a homeless derelict. The head wound this Shifty character mentioned could be from a beating this punk gave Alfano.”

  “Shirttail. How’d he get that name?”

  “No idea, but that’s what he answers to. He’s been picked up by FPD several times for petty theft, fighting, and things like that.”

  “So that means Alfano’s alive and still in the area. Unless Hawkins killed him for his wallet.”

  “Shirttail’s a rat, but I understand he’s not a killer. Anyway, to make that conclusion is a leap of faith. Maybe Shirttail took the wallet off of somebody who’d already rolled Alfano. Or took it off his body. You know, a case of the loot walking up the food chain. We can’t quite pin down when the guy was rolled. I suspect it took a couple of days for that idiot to work up the courage to use the cards.”

  “You could be right, but I’m going with the most logical conclusion—this Shirttail character took the wallet from Lando. If so, that means he didn’t leave on a plane out at Black Hole Canyon. He’s not running away.”

  “If your assumption is right, then it doesn’t look like it,” Gaines admitted.

  “Can I have a go at this Shirttail fellow?”

  “Sorry, can’t do that. He’s in federal custody.”

  “Why? Wouldn’t rolling Lando be a state offence?”

  “We’ve got temporary custody because of the federal warrant on Alfano. Probably turn him over to the city cops when we’re through with him. Or maybe Detective Joe will want him in connection with the Norville killing.”

  “Can I at least take a look at him?”

  “Why?”

  “To see if he’s somebody I’ve run across in the investigation so far.”

  “San Juan County’s housing him for us. I’ll call over and approve your taking a look at him, but you can’t question him. Clear?”

  “Clear. Thanks.”

  There probably wasn’t much to be gained from simply viewing Shirttail Bob through iron bars, but sometimes investigations hinge on weird things, so I called the crime lab at FPD, and they located Lonzo, who agreed to meet me at the San Juan County Adult Detention Center. If Hawkins was a troublemaker, Lonzo would probably know more about the man than Gaines did. I cooled my heels for half an hour in the parking lot watching the human traffic flow in and out of the place before Lonzo showed up
to escort me inside.

  When we located Shirttail Bob playing pinochle—a major jail pastime—Lonzo shook his head and muttered, “Shirttail, you piece of shit.”

  Although the man could not possibly have heard the comment, his eyes flicked in our direction and his demeanor changed. His studied nonchalance was now infused with tension. He continued to josh with his card mates, but his body language said he knew we were observing him.

  “I take it you know him,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah. I know him. He’s one of FPD’s regulars and a constant burr under the county’s saddle. Steals anything not bolted to the floor. Picks on younger kids. Roughs them up. The thing is, his family’s as decent a bunch as you’ll find around here. Sister in college. Brother plays basketball, baseball, soccer… any game with a ball in it. And then there’s Shirttail.”

  “How’d he get that street name?”

  Lonzo chuckled. “It’s not a street name. His daddy hung it on him when he was a kid. His shirttail was always hanging out, so that’s what the family called him. It stuck, and he’s been Shirttail ever since.”

  “Who does he run with?”

  “He’s been best friends with a kid named Felipe Levy ever since they were toddlers. You see one, you generally see the other.”

  “I wonder if you’re holding him too?”

  “I’ll check.”

  I studied the man through the bars while Lonzo was gone. If Shirttail hadn’t had a crafty look, he would have been a decent-looking man in his early twenties, but the broad mouth had a cruel twist, and the pale eyes moved restlessly back and forth. Judging from the jiggling foot and sidelong glances, my presence was getting to him. Sweating the information I needed out of him would not have been hard.

  Lonzo appeared at my side again. “Nope. Either the feds aren’t looking for Felipe—or Phil, as everyone calls him—or else they haven’t found him yet.”

  I nodded toward the card table. “Can I have a shot at that one?”

  “Sorry. If he were mine, I’d lock the two of you in a room with no windows and let you have at it. But the detention brass said Gaines made it clear you can see, but no direct contact.”