by Frank Hayes
“That’s a good idea, Virgil. Instead of making that trip by yourself, take Simon with you. He might enjoy seeing El Morro.”
“Are you sure, Simon?”
“I’ve got nothing special going on, don’t mind seeing some of the country. Someplace I’ve never been, sounds cool.”
“Okay. Let me finish my lunch.”
Ten minutes later Virgil was standing in the open doorway. Simon had already stepped outside. He was standing by the car, not making any attempt to get in.
“What’s the matter, Virgil?” Rosie saw the hesitant look on his face.
“Don’t know.” He looked out into the bright sunlight.
“Somebody walk over your grave, Virgil?” Rosie had come to stand beside him. “Hold on a second.” She left him then went back into the office. When she returned, she handed him a rifle from the gun rack. “You know this was Dave’s personal favorite. I know you’ve got your sidearm, but well, you never know. Dave took good care of it. Maybe it will take good care of you.”
Virgil took the rifle, put it under his arm, then leaned over and gave Rosie a hug and a light kiss.
“Virgil, be careful. What happened today out on High Ridge Road pretty much tells you you’re getting into deeper water here.”
“Stop, you’re scaring Simon. We’ll be fine. I’ll write Dave’s name and yours on El Morro.” Then he headed for the car.
Chapter 41
“What happened today?” Simon asked as soon as they got in the car.
“I’ll tell you on the way,” Virgil said. They rode for a couple of hours, only stopping once for gas and a pit stop. Virgil brought Simon up to date on all that had happened.
“So you think all of this, beginning with the killing of Mr. Stark, has something to do with the sand and gravel company and this guy Zambrano. The only thing I don’t understand is, if Mr. Stark discovered something, wouldn’t he have told his partner, Everett? If Everett knew something, after Mr. Stark’s death why didn’t he go to someone with his suspicions?”
“You know, Simon, those are some mighty good questions. I have been asking myself some of those same questions. I have a hunch that Everett seems to have known for quite a while that someone was after him, so he went to ground rather than seek some kind of protection. I don’t get it. Especially after his home was torched, his father beat up. It doesn’t make sense. I’m kind of looking forward to hearing his answers to some of those questions.”
The slanting sun was bouncing off the rugged cliff face when El Morro came into view. The sun was spotlighting it. An uncarved monolith, it dominated the landscape.
“Wow. That is impressive.” Simon’s words broke the silence. “This country is about as different as you can get. One minute you’re in desert flat as a pancake then something like that jumps into the sky. Green, brown, purple, red, it’s all there. In a strange way it reminds me a little of Afghanistan without the IEDs.”
There was no sign of life in the visitor center. It was after hours. Virgil saw one car in the lot, which he figured belonged to Everett. Late on a January day, El Morro looked like it must have looked to those people who had managed to cross the desert to drink and renew themselves from the pool at its base.
Virgil pointed out to Simon that for them it represented a kind of salvation, a sign that the worst of their journey was behind them. It was no wonder that they had left their mark on its walls, a sign that they had been here. They had survived.
“Paso por aqui,” he said. “This was their proof. Graffiti was not a twenty-first-century innovation.”
Virgil had pulled to the side of the parking area when he saw the other car. He turned the engine off and stepped out of the car. Simon joined him.
“Man, this is a lonely place.” Virgil nodded an acknowledgment.
A wind had kicked up. Some small tumbleweeds were caught in its grip, hopscotching across the barren landscape. There was no sign of Everett, or anybody else for that matter. Outside of the dim glow of a light from the visitor center and the groomed parking area, the landscape was as it had been for hundreds of years.
“Guess he got here early, decided to hike in the desert or walk the trail to the top. Probably got bored sitting in the car. I’ll go scare him up.”
“You want me to come?”
“No. You stay put just in case he didn’t go up top, decided to walk out into the desert. There’s a pair of binoculars in the glove compartment. Look for him. Maybe if you scramble up on that huge boulder, you’ll have a better vantage point.” He gestured in the direction of a huge rock that sat off to the side of the trail that led to the base of El Morro. “I’ll leave the laptop in the car, bring him down to use the flash drives.”
“Okay. If you need anything or if he shows up, give a yell.”
“You would never hear me,” Virgil said. “If I don’t find Everett within a half hour or so I’ll come back. You fire off a round if he shows up here. Otherwise, we’ll just wait by the car until he shows up.”
It was a little over a quarter mile to the base of the mountain from where Virgil had parked the car. He walked along a well-worn trail packed solid by the many visitors who had come to see El Morro, along with the inscriptions it bore. Virgil had only been here once before with his mother and father. Thinking back, as a young teen on summer vacation it wasn’t high on his list of places to go, but his mother had insisted. He remembered she had wanted him to see it through her eyes, as a revered place. She was trying to impress upon him that there were native cultures that existed long before the later settlers came across the prairie to drink from the waters at the base of this giant rock. His father had pointed out to Virgil that the first non-native, a Spaniard, had left his mark around 1615 but that some of the pictographs had been carved into its surface hundreds of years before. Even in his reluctant adolescence, Virgil could not escape the ghosts of this place. They lingered even now.
As he drew closer he had that same uneasy feeling that he had back in the office that Rosie had picked up on. He had never been particularly spiritual or a believer in omens. The eagle feather of his vision quest came to mind. His grandfather had given it to him, and only much later, after he had put years of faith into it, had it been revealed to him to be the feather of a dead hawk roadkill. But a gut feeling, a misalignment of the atoms that made up his universe, that was different. It had come to him rarely, unexpectedly, but when it had, he had been wise not to ignore it. He had that feeling now.
He had reached the base of El Morro, saw the pool that over the centuries had slaked the thirst of many, but saw no sign of Everett. A little further on he came to the first evidence of someone on the trail that began the ascent to the top, when he saw a cigarette butt lying on the ground. Virgil looked around, took a deep breath, then stepped on to the trail. The incline was gradual, but after ten minutes he had to pause for another breath. The air was getting thinner with the ascent. He also felt for the first time that he had broken a sweat. More evidence if he needed it that he had spent too little time lately in physical activity. He figured he was more than halfway to the top, so he gave a yell. Only the echo of his own voice against the sheer rock came back to him. He waited a moment, gave another yell, but there was no response. He began the final trek. Ten minutes later he stepped on top of El Morro. He had forgotten how big the expanse up there was until he saw in the distance the skeletal remains of the complex that had housed extended families of Zunis for over a hundred years. He walked over to the edge. When he looked down he could see far below in the distance the two parked cars in the visitor parking lot. He could barely make out the figure of Simon leaning against the large boulder alongside the trail. If he hadn’t made a slight movement, he would have been indistinguishable.
“Sorry about hitting you in the head with that log in back of the trailer, Sheriff.” Virgil was caught off guard by the words.
“Not as sorry as I was, Everett, but considering what had happened there, maybe I should have been a little mo
re on my guard.” Virgil looked at Everett Jessup in person for the first time. He was a little older than he had expected but he could see his father in him, the same square jaw, the full mouth and nose that looked like it might have been busted once or twice, not an unusual physical feature for someone who grew up on a ranch and might have hit the ground hard a couple of times after coming off a less than cooperative horse. In his mind’s eye he could also see him serving up a fastball or a slider, but nothing inside. “Anyways, no permanent damage done. Doc says I’ve got a harder than average head.”
“Glad to hear it. How is Pop?”
“He’s good. Out of the hospital, down outside of El Paso, spending some recoup time with my Aunt Clara. Didn’t know it before but seems like they have a lot of shared history.”
“Good. I want to thank you for what you’ve done. Pop told me. He even told me how you arranged care for his Jersey cow and calf along with Ranger.”
“Ranger?” Virgil repeated.
“Ranger, Dad’s horse. He loves that animal, but I sure wish he would give up the notion of riding.”
“I had forgotten his name. Yeah, well, I guess it’s more than just the riding. Think your Dad likes the idea of being independent. That colt, the idea that he can still ride, goes along with that. I get it.”
“I get it too. But it ain’t hard to break your neck when you’re Dad’s age.”
“I think he knows that too, Everett.”
“So, Sheriff, did you bring the flash drives that you got from Mike’s wife?”
“I did. They are down in my car along with a laptop, so you can plug them in and tell me what they have on them.”
“Oh, but you do have them, I mean here.”
Virgil reached into the jacket pocket of his coat, then held up a small packet.
“They were in this, but as I said, I took them out and left them down in the car with the laptop. Didn’t see much sense in carrying the laptop around or up on top of this mountain.”
“That’s all we need.” The voice, a different voice, came out of the shadows that had begun to spread across the top of El Morro. Some heavy clouds had swept across the monument, allowing only shafts of the setting sun to filter through, so the person attached to the voice was well hidden.
“I don’t think I understand,” Virgil said.
“You don’t have to,” the voice answered. “All we need are those flash drives. We already know what is on them.”
“Who are you? And what do you mean ‘we’ need them?”
The figure in the shadows stepped forward. For the first time Virgil saw the gun in his hand.
“Everett, what’s going on here?”
“I’m sorry, Sheriff. I, I . . . this is Randy. He’s . . . he’s.”
“We haven’t got time for this, Everett. Now we can get the flash drives.”
“I’m not giving them to you, Randy, whoever you are.”
“Don’t think you are in a position to do anything else, Sheriff. In case you hadn’t noticed, this is a gun.”
“But if you know what is on those flash drives, I don’t understand. Why do you need them?”
“I guess you can know that, not that it is going to do you any good. They are worth a lot of money to the right people. They are the proof that money was being laundered through Mesquite Sand and Gravel.”
“You knew this, Everett?” Virgil asked.
“No. I didn’t know it. Michael discovered it. He handled their books, did the final accounting. I just worked on the subdivision, then funneled my numbers to Michael for the final year end. He discovered how Zambrano in the last year had begun to launder outside money through the corporation. Those flash drives contain the hard evidence. Randy says we need them. Without them we got nothing. He calls them our bargaining chip.”
“Bargaining chip. What are you talking about? Who are you bargaining with, what are you planning to do?”
“Don’t you get it, lawman? This is our ticket to the good life. Zambrano will pay a ton of money to get these flash drives.” Again the words came from the shadow man.
“Blackmail, this is all about blackmail. Everett, you are going to be part of this?”
“Well, Randy says it’s only fair. It’s illegal money. It’s not like we are taking it from people. No one is getting hurt.”
“Everett, what are you talking about? People have already been hurt, your own father, that boy in the trailer.”
“That wasn’t supposed to happen. I didn’t know about that until later. Randy says that only happened because we didn’t have the flash drives.”
“What about Michael being killed?”
“We didn’t do that. I couldn’t do anything. I had no proof. I thought maybe it was an accident. It was Randy who put two and two together. Figured if we could find some hard proof . . .”
“No. Okay, maybe you didn’t get it all, but Everett, do you know who you are dealing with?”
“What do you mean do I know who we’re dealing with? Zambrano, he’s the one who began funneling outside money through the company.”
“Everett, you are not dealing with Zambrano here and Mesquite Sand and Gravel. Don’t you get it? The money going through the business isn’t Zambrano’s. Zambrano is a go-between for the people that funded him. He’s connected. I’ve been told his money, the money he got to probably buy the business, came from a Chicago family. Do you understand what that means?”
“We haven’t got time for all this. Everett, we got to get those damn flash drives.” Randy’s voice echoed off the rock walls.
“Don’t you know, Everett? Randy knows, don’t you, Randy? That is why you stay in the shadows, hiding in back of Everett.”
“What does he mean, Randy?”
“Nothing. He doesn’t know what he is talking about.”
“Everett, does Zambrano know anything about Randy?”
“No. Why would he?”
“Exactly. And that’s the way Randy wants it. You worked for Sand and Gravel. As far as Zambrano is concerned, you are the only one who knows or might have evidence of the money laundering. That’s why they came after you. Beat up your father, burned to death the young man in the trailer and probably killed Michael Stark. Everett, this is mob money, coming from Chicago. Randy has you in on a scheme to blackmail the mob. Even if it works and you get this money you’re after, do you think it’s going to end there? Do you really think they are going to forget about you? That is not the way they operate. They are going to come after you, not Randy. They don’t know about Randy. They are going to come after you and probably your father. They are going to get you. Like they say, you can run but you can’t hide. But Randy, he’ll be fine because no one knows anything about him.”
Randy ran forward to within a couple of feet of Virgil and Everett. He raised the gun.
“What are you doing, Randy?”
“You still don’t get it, Everett. That’s what this is all about,” Virgil said.
“Okay, Everett. Go down to the car. I’ll finish up here.”
“What do you mean, Randy?”
“He means, Everett, he’ll join you after he takes care of me. That gun isn’t a decoration.”
Everett took a couple of steps toward Randy.
“No, Randy. This was never part of it. We’ve got the flash drives. You said that was all we needed. We never talked about, about anything like this.”
“Everett, get real. He knows everything. What do you think he is going to do if we let him go? He’s a lawman.”
“No, Randy. We can’t do this.”
“We aren’t going to do this. I am. You go down to the car. I’ll take care of him.”
• • •
Simon had climbed up on the huge rock he had been leaning against a couple of times to look out over the uncluttered landscape for any sign of Everett. He had just jumped down from his last unsuccessful effort. Finally, he went to the car, got the binoculars from the glove box where Virgil said they would be. He thought abou
t climbing back up on the rock but first started looking out at the desert, adjusting the glasses to his eyes while he stood by the car. At last, he looked up at the face of the monolith that had given the place its history. He was reminded of pictures he had seen of Ayers Rock in Australia. The monolith stood apart from everything else in the landscape, inescapable to the eye. Tracing the side closest to him, he saw the weathered surface carved by the ages. Niches, defying the onslaught of the elements, filled with windblown dirt and sand, supported life. Dwarfed mesquite and cottonwood along with clutches of desert grasses pockmarked the rock face. Simon traced his way up to the top through the field glasses.
His eyes finally settled on two figures standing fairly close to the cliff edge. One of them, closest to the rim, he took to be Virgil because of his Stetson, the other he assumed to be Everett Jessup. Dim figures, cardboard cutouts in the slanting light of the setting sun moving in and out of the shadows. He walked further down the trail until he could see some animation of their bodies, but distinctness of their features were largely lost to him. He kept walking watching them until he noticed that their attention suddenly seemed to shift toward something he could not see. As he continued looking, another figure came into view. Again, he could not make out specific features, but as the light for just an instant fell on the third party, Simon saw the glint of something unmistakable in his hand. He had seen the sunlight reflect off enough gun barrels to know that was what he was looking at.
Without warning, he saw the arm attached to the gun rise. A sudden quick burst erupted, the hint of a flash followed by the echo as it rolled off the plateau to the desert below. Simon saw the figure who had moved suddenly to stand in front of Virgil grab his side then take a step or two backward. Then he saw Virgil reach out and grab him to keep him from falling. The figure with the gun advanced a couple of steps, waving both his arms. Simon could see the agitation in his movements.
He reached over and picked up Dave’s rifle, which he had taken with him when he left the car. It was an instinctive move. He looked again through the glasses. The armed figure on top of El Morro was still waving his arms, gesturing toward Virgil, who still seemed to be supporting the other man. Then he saw Virgil lay the man down. When he stood up he saw him moving closer to the edge of the rim, more into the fading light. The armed man followed closer, out into the full light, so that from Simon’s vantage point he looked like a silhouette against the western sun. Simon thought of the black one-dimensional figures dancing on the wire on the firing range. He knew that he only had a window of a few minutes before the sun slipped below the horizon.