The Sinister Pig

“If you still have some doubts about me, do you want to find a room here, and wait, and see if he comes to the Hotel la Maya?”

“No. No. No. Not that.”

“You could come home with me. Stay at my place. And call the Maya tomorrow to find out if he comes.”

“No.”

“Not stay at my place?”

“Not call. I would never call about that. But I think I would stay down here for a little while. I feel tired. And sort of sick. Could we find another hotel where I could stay a day or two?”

They did, and checked her in, and he took the cab back to the airport. Budge was remembering that return flight now. His relief, the feeling of the tension draining out him, a sort of jubilation. But the happy thought was interrupted. The colonel’s voice intruded in Spanish:

“You handled that very nicely,” Diego said.

“What?”

“The turbulence back there. Neatly done. Where did you learn to fly? From your Spanish, I thought perhaps it would have been in Cuba.”

“Some of it was,” Budge said. “And you, Diego. Where did you learn the trade?”

“Some in Mexico. And later on, some in El Salvador.” He chuckled. “For that very generous Central Intelligence Agency, courtesy of the United States taxpayers. And some in Panama, when their presidente was the drug boss down there.” Diego laughed. “He was also on the CIA payroll at the time, but they were paying him a lot more than I got. Your boss told me we have that CIA experience in common.”

“Well, I flew some for the CIA.”

“Yes,” Diego de Vargas said. “Not very pleasant to work for. Nor reliable.” He chuckled. “I can say the same thing for my own present patron. Muy rico. And very, very willing to kill somebody if they seem inconvenient. Including me, I have no doubt.”

“He and my patron seem perfectly matched in this business,” Budge said. “Why did he have that man killed up in northern New Mexico? That seems a long way from this.”

Diego turned his head, glanced back at Winsor in the seat behind him, then looked at Budge.

“You’re dead certain he doesn’t understand Spanish?”

“His second language is bad French,” Budge said. “He once heard me talking to one of his Mexican cleaning ladies and said something about not wanting any of his friends to hear that low-down language in his house.”

“Low-down? He meant undignified?”

“Trashy,” Budge said. “Low class. He won’t understand you. So tell me why that man was killed way up there.”

“I think it was a mistake. He was asking a lot of questions about pipelines. And about products being shipped through the wrong ones. The chief thought he should be erased and they decided the Mexican end of their project should handle it.”

“How about your uniform?”

“I’m a former colonel. But now it’s more or less honorary. The Reform Party won the election, and the good old PIRG is out, and President Fox is in. The PIRG people are getting fired, especially in the police and the military. These days I get paid through some big shot in Banco de Mexico, and I think he takes his orders from somebody in the Colombian cartel, and I don’t think that’s going to last very long. I hear the Fox people are after him, too.”

Diego sighed, shook his head. “My boss, he’s a miserable bastard. But I hear even worse stuff about your chief.”

“Believe it.”

“I heard he is so connected he could get you deported by just saying the word,” Diego said. “I heard they’d like to lock you up in Guatemala. If your patron speaks to the right people they haul you off to jail.” Diego shook his head. “I’ve seen those Guatemala lockups, man. You want to avoid that experience.”

Budge didn’t respond. He adjusted something on the instrument panel.

“You never know about gossip,” Diego said. “They say bad things about me, too.” He shrugged. “Some of them are true. How about you?”

“Well, I know my patron could give me some serious trouble if he wanted to do it.”

“Maybe he’s doing that right now,” Diego said. “Getting us in serious trouble, I mean. He says that woman who has been snooping around here is probably in the Border Patrol just to find out what we’re doing. I mean the one in the picture they’ve been handing around. I think the plan is to have her killed.”

Budge made another slight flight instrument adjustment, thought a moment, made a decision.

“Diego, I’m going to get very serious now. And tell you some things. The first is, I think you’re right. The second is, you and I are going to be lucky if we get out of this situation like free men, alive and well. And the third is, if that woman gets killed by anybody, we’re going to be the ones hanged for it. Just us. Not anybody who told us to do it.”

Diego sat silent for a long moment. And when he spoke his voice was very low. “What are you telling me?”

“That man sitting behind us, he thinks he has had this all arranged to perfection. His cocaine comes flowing through the pipe from Mexico. No more Border Patrol problems. It gets unloaded very simply, goes from his ranch here right into Phoenix, and then into the big-city markets, pure profits. A flawless plan. Absolutely no way anything could possibly go wrong. But you and I, we have already seen it hasn’t been flawless.”

“You mean the man killed up north. That’s true. We hear now that was a mistake. I don’t like mistakes.”

“Especially, I don’t like mistakes that might get me in prison. Or get me killed.”

Diego stared straight ahead, thinking. Then he glanced at Budge, his expression wry.

“You’ve been in the U.S. of A. a long time. The patron”—he nodded toward Winsor behind him—“he seems to think you can kill this woman cop and get away with it. What do you think about that.”

“I don’t know what he thinks. But I think that if we kill her, he has it figured out so he’ll get away with it. But if he has it figured right, she is a federal cop. The federals will catch us, wherever we go. Not give up until they do. And then they either kill us or we die in a federal prison somewhere. And, of course, that’s exactly the way he hopes it will work out. He wouldn’t want us around anymore.”

Diego sighed. “Yes,” he said. “It would be true also among those where I’ve always worked.”

“The way it happens in Washington, my patron is rich and powerful, and his roomful of lawyers and very important friends let the police know that our rich and powerful boss is innocent. He just came out here to shoot an African antelope for his trophy room. And he had me put his special trophy hunting rifle back there in the storage place to show them evidence that that’s the truth. And then he says he was betrayed by two low-class scoundrels who already are wanted by the police.”

“Yes,” he said. “That sounds like it would be in Mexico too.”

“I think there is a way out of this for us,” Budge said.

“Tell me,” Diego said.

Winsor’s voice intruded:

“Hey, Budge,” Winsor said. “There’s the ranch up there ahead. You guys knock off that Mex gabbing and pay attention to business. You think that strip looks safe enough?”

“I’ll lose some altitude and circle,” Budge said. “Why take chances.” He flew over the Tuttle Ranch headquarters, the big tile-roofed ranch house, and the row of mobile homes where the hired hands lived, the barns, the stables, the horse pasture, the stock tank with its connected windmill. He studied the landing strip. It was a straight and narrow black band pointing into the prevailing winds. It looked blacker than he remembered, apparently recently stabilized by a fresh coating of oil. The windsock on the pole atop the little hanger reported a mild westerly breeze was blowing. He was low enough to see the nose of the ranch’s little Piper backed into the hanger and to recognize that the dark blue sports utility vehicle parked beside it was a Land Rover.

He turned to look at Winsor. “See anything there you don’t want to see?”

“No. How about you?”

“Looked good,” Budge said, and banked again, completing the circle, leveling off toward the southwest into the landing approach position.

“When we get on the ground, you can leave most of that luggage stowed away. We won’t be here more than