The Collection

redneck really was like one of those movie villains, and I hated the son of a bitch. Espe­cially since I couldn't seem to get a single scrap of evidence on him.

What made it even worse was that the redneck seemed to be almost a folk hero to some of the pin-striped pinheads who passed for human in the downtown offices of the INS. It was well known in certain circles that he'd had a hand in the fire that had destroyed one of the big Sanctuary safe houses down in Casa Grande, and that he'd had something to do with those fourteen illegals who'd roasted to death in that abandoned semi outside of Tucson. But while the feds and the locals were making a big show out of fighting it out over jurisdictional rights, both were making only token ef­forts to dredge up evidence. As they saw it, the redneck was doing their work for them, in his own crudely violent fash­ion. As a criminal, he was not subject to the same restric­tions they were, and in a warped and twisted way they seemed to admire his racist ingenuity.

Strangely enough, I'd been hired by Father Lopez, a priest involved in the Sanctuary movement, to look into the matter. Tired of dealing with the intransigence of the blue uniforms, the gray suits, and the red tape, afraid for the safety of the dozen or so Salvadoran refugees he was hiding in the basement of his church, he'd asked me to see if I could dig up anything on the redneck which could put him away for good. Father Lopez had been threatened more than once, and he knew it was only a matter of time before those threats were carried through.

So far, I'd come up snake eyes, but I was getting close and the redneck knew it. That's why he'd roughed up Trinidad. And that's why the deal had gone wrong. I don't think he'd intended to kill the coyote, but he had. He'd pan­icked, gone too far, and now the noose was starting to tighten. It was only a matter of time before he slipped up, made a mistake, and I pulled that sucker taut. The law might not be willing to work to bring down the redneck, but they couldn't and wouldn't turn him out if he was dropped, case closed, into their fat blue laps.

Julio was gone when I stopped by his apartment, and his old lady didn't seem to know where he'd gone to. Or at least wasn't willing to inform a cowboy-booted gringo of his whereabouts, so I decided to drop by and see Father Lopez.

At the church it was pandemonium. Father Lopez had made the mistake of telling his guests that Trinidad was walking with God, hoping they'd help him pray for the coy­ote, but the result had been to panic the refugees. Trinidad had brought most of them over, was their sole symbol of strength and stability in this country, and his killing fright­ened them badly. They naturally thought that his murder was the result of a death squad bent on tracking them down. When I arrived, Father Lopez was trying to explain that the coyote had been killed by an American, an American acting on his own and not in the employ of their government, but it was clear even to me that few if any of them were buying it. They seemed to want to leave the church now, strike out on their own, and take their chances scattered on the street.

'Father,' I said. 'I need to talk to you for a minute.'

'Hold on.' He spoke rapidly in Spanish to the agitated people in the basement, trying to assuage their fears.

My Spanish was nowhere near fluent, but I moved next to the priest, motioned for him to be quiet, and gave the refugees my own version of the story. Since I was white and obviously American, my words carried a little more weight than those of the priest, though they were spoken haltingly. I guess to them I represented some sort of authority.

Father Lopez looked at me gratefully, then expanded on what I'd said, speaking quickly and reassuringly. It seemed to work. I went back upstairs to wait.

After the situation had settled down and Father Lopez had emerged from the basement, I spoke to the priest alone. We were in his office off the vestibule, and I was seated in a low comfortable chair. I leaned forward. 'Does the name Bumblebee mean anything to you?' I asked.

He had been casually reclining in his chair, and suddenly he sat up very straight. His face was pale. 'Who told you about Bumblebee?'

'Trinidad,' I said. 'Although he didn't really tell me. It was the last thing he said before he died.'

The priest crossed himself. 'No,' he said.

'Yes.' I stood up. I put my hands in my back pockets and began pacing. 'Look,' I said. 'If there's something I should know, you'd better tell me. When I work for a client, I ex­pect that client to be straight with me, to lay all of his cards on the table. I don't care if you are a priest, I expect you to tell me everything. I'm on your side. And I can't look out for your interests if I don't have all the facts.'

Father Lopez seemed to have regained his composure. He nodded slowly. 'All right,' he said.

'Good.' I sat down again. 'So what exactly is Bumble­bee?'

'It's a town. An old ghost town in the Sonora desert past Tucson. I'm surprised you haven't heard of it. There was a big battle there in the late 1800s between United States troops and a small group of Mexican renegades. The rene­gades weren't affiliated with the Mexican government, but they were basically fighting the same fight. Only the men at Bumblebee didn't lose their battle, though Mexico eventu­ally lost the war. Seventeen untrained fighters successfully held off and killed over a hundred American troops. The Americans just kept coming, and they just kept getting killed. Finally they gave up, decided to avoid the town and fight elsewhere. I guess they wrote it off as a loss. When the fighting was over and the boundaries were redrawn, how­ever, Bumblebee became part of Arizona. Politics destroyed f what war couldn't.'

'That's a nice story,' I said. 'But what does it have to do with Trinidad?'

'I don't know,' the priest told me, meeting my gaze.

He was lying. I knew he was lying, and he knew I knew he was lying. I sat unmoving. Father Lopez was neither a stupid nor a cowardly man, and he wouldn't have played albino and crossed himself if there hadn't been something heavy on his mind. Bumblebee and whatever that implied had scared the holy shit out of him, but I knew if I pressed him any further he was going to Pismo up on me, so I de­cided to drop back. I felt I had enough to work with.

It was time to take a trip.

Bookbinder Baker lived in the desert outside Tonopah amidst the bones and bodies of the cars he'd bought and scavenged over the past forty years. Traded Torinos, aban­doned Audis, and roadkilled Ramblers lay bleached and rusted, sinking into the sand surrounding his three-room shack. His property covered nearly twenty acres of the most godawful terrain known to man. Tonopah itself was a town in name only, an all-night gas station and burger stand halfway between Phoenix and the California border which catered almost exclusively to long-distance truckers, and Baker's place was some fifteen miles down a dirt road be-yond that, flat in the middle of the sagebrush-infested flat-lands. He liked it there, though. Always had.

Baker didn't appear to be around when I arrived, didn't answer either my honks or my call, but I knew he'd be back eventually, and I went inside to make myself at home. As al­ways, his front door was open, screen unlocked, and I simply walked into his living room and sat down on the sagging couch. He'd put a few new hubcaps up on the wall since the last time I'd seen him, and I examined those while I waited. At one time in the dim and distant past, Baker'd been a teacher of some sort, a historian. He still knew more about the history of the Southwest, major and minute, than anyone I'd ever met. One whole wall of his bedroom was lined with books and magazines on various historical subjects. It was just that now his job and his hobby had been switched. In­stead of being a teacher who tinkered with cars on the week­end, he owned an auto yard and studied history on the side, although where he got customers for his auto salvaging service I never could figure out.

I heard the sputtering cough of Baker's engine about five minutes later, and I walked outside to meet him. The tow truck pulled up, empty, in front of the shack. 'Hey!' he said. 'Long time no care!'

I held up my middle finger, and he laughed. After the pleasantries, after he'd broken out the beer, we got down to business. I asked him if he'd ever heard of a town called Bumblebee. I repeated Father Lopez's story.

He chuckled. 'Hell yes, I remember Bumblebee. That's not its real name, though. That's the American name, given 'cause that's where we got stung. The Spanish name is longer. It means 'magic sands,' or something like that.' He took a swig of his beer. 'Yeah, I been down there many times, taking pictures, checking the place out. It's kind of like our Alamo, you know? Only it never got as much pub­licity because there weren't nobody famous died there, and because, well, I guess Texans are just better at talking them­selves up than we are.'

'But why do you think the priest was so scared?' 'Well, Bumblebee was some type of, I don't know, not sacred land exactly, but something like that. I wish I had it documented so I could look it up, but it's not anything that's been written about. I just know that the area was supposed to have some sort of significance for the Mexicans, was sup­posed to have some sort of magic powers. In the treaty, you know, the original boundaries of our state were different. Mexico wanted to keep Bumblebee, give us Nogales. But we wanted a nice square border,