by Don Travis
“Go do your thing, Del,” I said as he braked beside Harrison’s unit.
“Who do we represent?”
“Orlando Alfano. Scruffy character between those two policemen. Hadn’t had time to give him a bath.”
“I’ll stand downwind.” Del started across the tarmac, yelling in a loud voice, “My name is Dahlman, and I’m Mr. Alfano’s attorney.”
Smart. Make them take a few minutes to sort out which Alfano he represented.
As I approached at a more deliberate and wobbly pace, Plainer moved to intercept me.
“He’s with me,” Del snapped. “He’s my investigator. I want him here.” Gaines nodded. “Mr. Alfano, don’t say another word,” Del continued after dealing with Plainer.
I think Gaines was surprised when he addressed Lando rather than Aggie. The advice was, however, intended for both.
“I need a few minutes with my client,” Del said to the senior agent.
“You can see him after he’s processed over at the San Juan County Adult Detention Center.”
“Fine, I’ll meet you there. In the meantime, remember, Mr. Alfano. You give them only your name, ID information, and address. Nothing else. Do you understand?”
Lando, looking pretty well out of it, nodded mutely. Gaines signaled the officers, and they hustled the prisoner to Lonzo’s Crown Victoria.
Gaines faced Aggie. “Now, what do we do about you?”
“What do you mean? I was just trying to take my brother home. Our lawyer—our California lawyer—would have called you tomorrow and arranged for us to turn him over to you. In the meantime, we’d have cleaned him up and explained his rights to him.”
“I think the detention center will take care of the former, and Mr.… uh, Dahlman will accomplish the latter. But you were aiding and abetting a federal fugitive. That’s a crime.”
“You can’t be serious,” Aggie protested.
“What’s the range of that plane, Mr. Alfano? It would probably make it to Canada without much trouble. How do I know you were taking him to California?”
“Because that’s where his home is, where all his support is. And that support is considerable,” Aggie added rashly.
“Yes, I know all about the Alfano money and the Sabelito Trust and the muscle your family has in that state. But you aren’t in California now. This is New Mexico. All of which is irrelevant since the crime was committed on federal trust lands.”
Aggie had the good sense to shut his mouth.
“I’m going to withhold judgment on charging you for the moment, but I don’t know how Detective Joe feels about it.”
“I’m okay with that,” Lonzo said. “At least he flushed the fugitive for us.” The words were benign, but Lonzo’s dark eyes were fixed on me as he spoke.
“Very well, you’re free to go for the moment,” Gaines said. “But be warned, I may change my mind before this is all over.”
“Don’t worry. I’m going to the detention center with you.”
“You won’t be able to talk to your brother tonight. Might as well go get some rest. I’ll make arrangements for you to visit him tomorrow.”
“I—”
“Go home, Mr. Alfano. Or rather, go to your hotel or motel or wherever you’re staying. Where are you staying, anyway?”
“The Trail’s End.”
“Glad to see all the eggs are in one basket,” Gaines said. “Same goes for you, Mr. Vinson. Mr. Dahlman can have access to his client, but nobody else—at least until tomorrow.”
I touched Del’s arm and gave him a questioning look. He nodded.
“Before you go, there’s something you should know,” I said.
Gaines contained his impatience as I stumbled over my tongue relating the events of the attack on me at the motel. Then he turned to Officer Harrison, who had escorted us to the airport, and made certain the evidence—namely the stun gun—had been handled properly.
“We’ll sort out jurisdictions later,” he said before he allowed Del to drive me back to the motel.
When we arrived at the motel, a crime scene unit was working over my room. They permitted me to get my shaving kit and a clean pair of clothes before handing over a key to a new room. Mine would be off-limits until they were finished. Del advised me to go to bed before he headed out to the detention center to see his client.
“You look like hell, Vince. Get some rest.”
There was nothing I wanted more than to fall into bed, but first I had to talk to Aggie Alfano.
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Chapter 32
AGGIE’S ROOM was directly on the other side of Del’s. He opened the door at my knock and scowled at me. “What do you want?”
“We need to talk.”
“You turned us in, Vinson. Why should I talk to you?”
“Yes, I did. And we need to talk about that too.”
Curiosity apparently got the better of him. He stood back and allowed me to enter. “Why’d you do it?”
“For Lando’s sake.”
“The hell you say. Lando’s better off in jail than with his family?”
I entered and sat down next to a table identical to the one I’d upended earlier in my room. He sat on the edge of the bed, facing me.
“Look at it from my perspective. Somebody was trailing your brother and Dana. Santillanes tried to kidnap Lando. Someone killed Dana. And it all ties back to your family somehow.”
“I don’t know why you are so hung up on that theory.”
“And then you take off in the middle of the night with your brother, disabling Jazz’s car and puncturing the tires on Henry’s bike.”
“I didn’t puncture them. I just let the air out.”
“Whatever. But right about the same time somebody assaulted me in my own room demanding to know where your brother was.”
“That ought to let me off the hook. I was out on the desert driving like hell for the airport. The first time I heard about the attack was when you told Gaines tonight. I’ll swear to that. It was probably the same guy who tried to bushwhack Jazz out on the reservation.”
“Yes, it probably was, but that begs the question. Why did you take Lando?”
“Why do you think? There was someone out there with a gun looking for him. And you were going to turn him over to the FBI.”
“That’s what had to happen—for his own sake. Before some nervous rookie put a bullet or two in him.”
“That’s why I needed to get him home. The old man’s got contacts there. He could have arranged to turn Lando over and have him released into our custody.” He shrugged. “I saw an opportunity and took it.”
“And you see the results. That’s why your father hired me, Aggie. I’ve had more experience in dealing with the law than you have. Besides, your father can still throw his weight around if he’s got that much juice.”
“Yeah, but right now Lando’s sitting in jail. How do you think he’s going to handle that?”
“He’ll be fine. Gaines is no fool. He knows your family has money and influence. He’ll put Lando in isolation. Besides, Gaines was right; you could have taken him to Canada and made him a fugitive for the rest of his life.”
“You think I’d do that to my brother?”
“To be honest, I don’t know what to think. But I’ll say it one more time. Somebody in or close to your family—or at least to the De Falco acquisition—is mixed up in this. Nothing else makes sense. There’s no evidence either Lando or Dana got into trouble—serious trouble—along the way. So there’s no reason for perfect strangers to be after them. And we all agree they weren’t dealing drugs—well, except for Gaines—so what else is left? It’s the buyout.”
“You told me this place has a bad civil rights rep. Maybe it’s somebody who hates gays.”
“A possibility. But in my experience, if a bigot gets in his licks, he struts away and brags about it to his buddies. This started in Albuquerque and has continued halfway across the state. It
doesn’t fit the pattern.”
“So you’re looking for a killer in my family.” Aggie ran a hand through his hair. “Maybe Santillanes went overboard and killed Dana when Lando got away from him.”
“There was someone else at Bisti. I’m sure you picked Lando’s brain and know there was a third car down at the Wilderness the day Santillanes chased him. And then Santillanes winds up dead. Do you really think Lando did either one of those killings?”
He sighed. His body slumped with fatigue. “No, I don’t. Lando didn’t kill anyone.” He gave me a look. “So I’m a suspect? Okay, tell me why I would kill Dana. What’s my motive? He’s—” Aggie licked his lips and started over. “He was a good kid. In fact, I think he was good for Lando.”
“I can’t think of a reason for you to strangle him right off the bat, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. You’ve got to admit this thing runs deeper than it seemed at first.”
“This conversation is over. I’m wiped out. I need to get some rest.”
“Good idea. Have you let your father know what’s happened?”
“Yeah, I called him earlier. I didn’t talk to him directly, but I left word.”
“You didn’t speak to him?”
“He’s down in LA on business. I left a detailed message on his cell.”
“He hasn’t called you back?”
“Not yet. That’s probably the next thing that’ll come along to cost me sleep. It makes a guy envy Lando in isolation.”
With hair bristling and my back puckering uncontrollably, I went to my new room and unlocked the door with the key the crime scene supervisor had given me. I reached through to flip on the light before throwing the door wide. Officer Harrison had returned my pistol, but no assailants waited in ambush this time. Still a little enervated from the zapping, I collapsed on the side of the bed and seriously considered turning in without bothering to clean up. But the blinking red light on the telephone revived me. Impressed that the night clerk had been on the ball enough to have rerouted the call, I retrieved the message from the motel’s old-fashioned communications system and listened to Jazz’s disembodied, clearly frustrated voice.
“This is you-know-who. Where are you, man? I’ve been trying to reach you.”
Shit, I’d forgotten to give him Del’s cell number until I could pick up a replacement phone.
From the guarded way he spoke, it was obvious Jazz was getting into this private investigator thing. “We went to the assigned spot. Guess what? There was this little airplane sitting there. Don’t know what kind, but it has some big numbers painted on the side—N-5642. Maybe that can ID it for you. Anyway, there’s nobody standing guard, so Hen—uh, my buddy and I followed your suggestion, if you know what I mean.”
He meant they’d punched holes in the tires. Was Henry getting as big a kick out of this caper as his brother?
“That sucker’s not going anywhere for a while. Do you want us to stay here or go home? I got my phone on vibrate so it won’t wake the neighborhood if you call when you get this message. We need instructions, okay?”
I punched in his number on the room phone. He must have been asleep because the cell rang for quite a while before his voice came over the wire.
“BJ?”
“Yeah. Sorry, but I’ve been tied up with the FBI. They stopped Aggie before he could get in the air. Took Lando to the detention center.”
“So you really turned them in?”
“You heard me on the phone talking to the cop. I had to, Jazz. If we’d helped Lando escape, we could all have been in big trouble. I didn’t want that for any of us. Besides, I’m not sure why Aggie ran with him, so Lando might be safer in jail.”
“You think Aggie could be in on this? He seems like a pretty square dude to me.”
“With ‘pretty’ being the operative word.” I couldn’t resist yanking his chain a little.
“He’s sure that, okay. A dude’d have trouble picking out the best-looking brother in that family. But seriously, he seemed all right.”
“There’s money involved, and when money’s involved, things get complicated. He might have simply been trying to protect his brother like he said, but even if that’s true, helping him get away wasn’t the best way of doing it.”
“So now what? What do you want Henry and me to do?”
“If it’s not too much trouble, stay there the rest of the night. I was assaulted in my room just before you called about Aggie running with Lando. Chances are the two men who did it might try to leave the area. Which reminds me, how did you get to Black Hole? I thought Aggie put your car and Henry’s bike out of commission.”
“He let the air out of the bike’s tires and yanked out the distributor off the rental car. It’s probably out there in the desert near the hogan, but it was too dark to look for it. Henry carries a tube he rigged up, so we used the air in the car’s tires to inflate the bike. It’s a neat contraption.”
“So you’re on the bike? That’s good. You can hide it easier. Look, if anybody shows up at the plane tonight, you stay out of the way. Don’t let them see you. Do you understand?”
“Loud and clear. Stay out of their way. You want me to call you at the motel if they show?”
“No, they’d be long gone before I could get there.”
“Okay, then we’ll follow them.”
“No!” Crap, that was exactly what those two would do. “No,” I repeated less stridently. “It makes more sense to stay on the scene. They might go for help to repair the craft, so I want you to stay there and warn me if that happens.”
Disappointment was evident in the junior PI’s voice as he agreed. I could have found worse local help in this matter—lots worse. Next I woke Charlie and asked him to find out all he could about a plane with tail number N-5642.
DEL HAD paved the way, so I had no trouble interviewing Lando in the detention center early the next morning—actually, later that same morning. Del, looking like something out of GQ, despite the fact that he’d had less sleep than I had, led the way to where the young man was waiting in a small cinder-block interview room that probably resembled one of the detention cells. We took seats opposite a freshly scrubbed and barbered but still bewildered Lando. I led him through his story again just to be certain I hadn’t missed anything of significance the first time around. He recited details he hadn’t remembered last night, but they merely fleshed out things without changing the basics. They did, however, show his mental condition had improved. Then I posed the question I came there to ask.
“Lando, why did you oppose the purchase of De Falco Fine Wines by your father’s company?”
The question seemed to catch him by surprise, and for a moment I was afraid it had sent him back into limbo. But after a brief clouding of his eyes, he answered. “At first, I was against it because Aggie was. But when Mama started stressing out over it, it hit me that Papa was using her money to finance something that was half the size of his own net worth. That didn’t seem fair.”
“So you supported her. Opposed the buyout, I mean.”
“Using her money? You bet. He didn’t have any right to do that. That’s when the trouble started.”
“What do you mean?” I listened to his voice carefully. There was nothing in his syntax or his inflections to suggest he was gay. Orlando Alfano was better looking than most men his age and perhaps a little more graceful, but a fellow would need pretty good gaydar to pick up on anything more. Unless Lando wanted him to, that is.
“It ended up with me pulling her one way and Papa pulling her the other,” he said. “And Victoria too. She wanted the buyout to go through.”
“Your sister? Was that for her husband’s sake?”
“Partly, but she wanted to run that division herself and build her own little empire inside the company. She’d put William—that’s her husband, William Vitrillo—in as her second and hire her own kids when they got old enough. And, of course, William was brokering the deal, so he’d get a couple of million bucks
out of it right up-front.”
“Was Aggie pulling at your mother from the other side?”
He paused, tilting his head slightly as he considered the question. “No, I don’t suppose he was. Thinking back on it, he was relying on me for that. My mom and I are close.”
“I see.” I put my palms on the table and prepared to rise.
“That’s why I changed my mind.”
“What?” I dropped back into my chair.
“Well, Papa was still coming at her hard—real hard. Victoria too. Sis is as much a bulldog as Papa when she sets her mind on something. Mama’s not strong. She gets colds and bronchitis real easy, and stress makes it worse. And she had cancer, but I guess they got that. Anyway, that’s why I asked her for that power of attorney to act in the De Falco matter. I thought that would take the pressure off her.”
“Did it work?”
“Sorta. Right after she gave it to me, Dana and I took off on vacation. It got me out of the line of fire, but a power of attorney isn’t irrevocable. Once I got out of his reach, Papa started putting pressure on Mama again.”
“So you changed your mind and decided to support the purchase?” That was the first time Del spoke since we started the interview. “I’m not certain I understand your reasoning, Lando.”
“Fifty million is a small part of my great-grandpapa’s trust, so I decided it would be easier on her to go along with Papa. Aggie is stronger than Mama. If he was dead set on stopping the deal, he’d have to do it on his own. He can take the pressure better than she can.”
“Did you tell Aggie about your decision?”
Lando nodded, and my gut clenched. Why had Aggie denied any knowledge of it?
“Yeah, he said he understood, but he asked me to think it over some more before I told anyone else.”
“When was that?”
“About halfway through the trip. Before we came up to the Four Corners area.”