“I am,” Leaphorn said. “Is she all right?”
“Fine. Just homesick and lonesome. But she had some information she wanted me to pass along to you.”
Mrs. Garza thereupon started at the beginning. Bernie taking the pictures at the Tuttle Ranch of the exotic animals and the work project. Ed Henry, her supervisor, telling her she had violated an arrangement Customs had with the ranch, described the arrangement, described Henry photographing Bernie, told of Bernie arresting the four illegals and their driver and how the driver had recognized Bernie—telling her that drug operators in Agua Prieta had copies of the photo Henry had taken, and they had the idea that Bernie was some sort of special agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency.
Halfway through this account Leaphorn sat himself on the car’s fender, but he didn’t interrupt.
“Any questions?” Mrs. Garza asked.
“Not until you’re finished,” he said.
“I am.”
“OK. How do you know Mr. Henry took the photograph?”
Garza explained.
“And these illegals, were they in the drug traffic?”
“The driver told Bernie he had been, in a minor way. Some driving for them but he’d been afraid, and quit.”
“How about the other four?”
She described them with names, and their reasons for immigrating after failing to find work at the old smelter.
“That smelter. At San Pedro de los Corralitos, I think you said. You know anything about that?”
“Not much. I think it was running all through World War II when the price was so high and then on into the 1960s until the price went down. And the old man, Mr. Gomez, said there were rumors it was reopening and hiring people. I had heard those rumors, too. My aunt wrote me about them way last year. She said everybody thought there would be jobs again, but nothing was happening.”
“You have family down there?”
Mrs. Garza laughed. “I have family all over Sonora. Garzas, and Tapias, and Montoyas. I was a Tapia, and my great-uncle Jorge Tapia, he ran one of the furnaces there at San Pedro de los Corralitos for Anaconda when they had the smelter. But then they sold it to Phelps Dodge and he got laid off. But that was when I was a little girl. Now my aunt said another company had bought it, and everybody thought the mine there would open again and the smelter would be hiring. But no.” Mrs. Garza paused, inhaled, sighed.
“That didn’t happen?”
“She said a crew came in to dig up part of that old gas line and fixed it up. One of my nephews did some of the dirt moving. But they brought in their own pipeline people to do the technical work. And the jobs just lasted a few weeks.”
“All they were doing was fixing a pipeline?”
“He said they replaced some of the broken windows in a storage building. Cleaned up stuff. Things like that.”
“What can you tell me about the pipeline?”
“All I know about that is it must be the one that brought in the gas for the fires in the smelter. To melt down the ore. Or whatever they do. My aunt said people were happy about that. What would they need gas for if they weren’t going to get the smelter going again?” She sighed once more.
“One final question. Do you know I’m retired. Not with the police anymore? Why are you telling me this?”
“How do I answer that?” Garza said. “I guess I just tell you the truth. I told Bernie she should call her Sergeant Chee, her former boss, and see if he could figure out what it was all about. But she wouldn’t call him. Said you knew everybody in law enforcement out here. You’d be better, and you’d be willing to help.”
“I will help if I can,” Leaphorn said.
“I also think Bernie would be happy if you passed all that information along to her sergeant.”
“I’ll do that,” Leaphorn said.
“Oh,” Garza said. “But don’t tell him I said Bernie said you’d be better.”
“I won’t,” Leaphorn said.
And that was pretty much the end of the conversation. Leaphorn slid off the fender and rubbed his ear.
Louisa reached for the phone.
“Thanks,” Leaphorn said, but he kept the telephone.
“You said you’d help if you could. How?”
“I don’t know,” Leaphorn said.
“And what do you mean, just saying ‘Thanks’? What was that all about? Is Bernie all right? From the way you were looking, it sounded pretty serious.”
“I don’t know,” Leaphorn said. “Maybe it is.” And he told Louisa why he thought so.
“I think you should do something about this,” Louisa said. “If you can think of what in the world you can do. At least tell Jim Chee about it.”
“Leaphorn was punching keys on the cell phone. “I’m doing that now,” he said. But he stopped dialing.
“Louisa, you’re good at finding the stuff I’m always misplacing. Now I’ve got to find what I’ve done with some old maps. U.S. Geological Survey, or Bureau of Indian Affairs, or maybe Bureau of Land Management, or Department of Energy. I remember having at least two that showed major pipeline routes and one of them even included lines where the government had granted easements for pipeline rights.”
“I think you keep the old, old maps you no longer look at but are too stubborn to throw away in that big cardboard box on the shelf in the garage,” Louisa said. “And since you’re already all dusty from hunting whatever you lost in the car I’ll let you climb up and get it down yourself.”
18
Winsor’s trip to solve the Mexican end of his problem took many preparations. He called his man at the bank and sent Budge down with a check and a note, thereby withdrawing a bundle of Mexican currency to have with him in case it was needed on the border or in Sonora. He made a call to his congressman’s office to get the doer of helpful deeds there to ease the way with Customs officials and set things up for Budge to get international flight permissions cleared for his Dessault Falcon 10 to enter and leave Mexico. With competent assistants on call, political clout, and deep pockets, he had no problems getting such jobs rapidly accomplished. First stop would be El Paso, where he’d told his Mexican lawyer to meet him. His next stop would depend on what he learned in that conversation.
Meanwhile, he would spend the flight time improving his understanding of Budge. The competence with which Budge had dealt with Chrissy hadn’t surprised him. But the coolness of the man and his utter confidence in himself had suggested to Winsor that there was a depth to Budge he hadn’t expected. Before long he expected Chrissy’s many girlfriends and her family would be wondering what happened, why no one was answering her telephone, why his own secretary didn’t know why she wasn’t showing up for work, why her professors out at the university law school knew nothing at all. Pretty soon her family would report her missing, he’d be getting questions. The police would be making inquiries.
Chrissy’s family were Italian immigrants operating a string of restaurants. They had political connections in their state. They weren’t the sort he wanted to socialize with in Washington or New York, but they were useful with one senator and three of their state’s congressmen. That meant almost certainly the Washington police would be on the hunt, probably the FBI as well. He had worried about that. Braced himself for unpleasantness. But Budge had worked it out so that the story left behind would be too simple to interest either the press or the police. She had called for the limo, told Budge she had to go to the airport, he had taken her there, left her off at her airline’s terminal as she requested, and come home. And thus Chrissy, and the threat she represented, had vanished without a trace. Budge had left absolutely nothing for police or press to find. A real cool professional at work.
Winsor found himself thinking of this immigrant Latino as a man of his own class, just as he thought of the top people with whom he dined, and partied, and competed with in the economic and political world. That sort of
