Stallion Gate (9 page)

“I have an FBI report that a Soviet courier is on the way to the Hill. Suddenly Dr. Oppenheimer takes the
time to meet this Dr. Weiss and personally escort her here. It doesn’t make sense. You’ve seen her?”

“It was dark this morning.”

“She’s in there with the Oppenheimers right now. It could be a regular Communist cell meeting. Wouldn’t it be interesting to hear what they’re saying right now, to hear whatever they say when they think they’re alone?” Augustino pondered the possibility. He looked up at Joe. “I want you to keep an eye on Dr. Weiss. I want you to get close to her. Use your Indian charm. Next time we talk, have something for me.”

The captain started his jeep, reversed and U-turned back toward the Lodge. There were laughs in the garden.

“Or I’ll huff”
—Teller’s voice rose dramatically—
“and I’ll puff. And I’ll huff. And I’ll puff—”

Santa Fe was an hour away, but it was the shopping and social center of the Hill. People went to Woolworth’s or Sears during the day, and at night to the La Fonda hotel. On the plaza in the center of town, the La Fonda was a three-story mock-adobe fantasy with exposed beams and wooden balconies. The hotel had also become, thanks to the Hill, an outpost of the FBI.

It was the task of the Bureau to watch everyone from the Hill who came into Santa Fe. Since everyone went to the bar of the La Fonda, the agents comfortably stationed themselves in the hotel lobby. When Joe entered, half a dozen agents stirred, then recognized Oppy’s bodyguard and settled back into rustic leather chairs. The agents called scientists from the Hill “longhairs.” Everyone from the Hill, who could spot them by their straw snap-brim hats, called the agents “creeps.”

The bar was full. Santa Fe was the state capital and attracted a large number of alcoholics who were legislators or lobbyists, plus oilmen, cattlemen and tourists. The bartender was a strategically placed agent, and
everyone had suffered while he learned to build a decent martini. For once, Joe didn’t see Harvey or anyone else from the Hill. It had taken him two hours to get to Santa Fe because he’d had two flat tires on the Pojoaque Creek shortcut to the highway. Under his arm was a newspaper folded over wrapped strips of gelignite. All he wanted to do was deliver the high explosive and keep on going to Albuquerque and the Casa Mañana.

“A bourbon,” Joe said, since he was there.

“That’s against the law.” A gnome in a white suit hopped onto the stool next to Joe. Hilario “Happy” Reyes waved a Havana panatella as if in the comfort of his living room—which, in many ways, the bar of the La Fonda was. “Tsk, tsk, serving liquor to an Indian? I suppose we can make an exception for the Chief.”

“And you,” Joe said.

Hilario was lieutenant governor of the State of New Mexico. More, he was legend. He was from Santiago Pueblo, and Joe had seen old pictures of him dancing in white buckskin leggings at the Omaha world’s fair of 1898. But when statehood came in 1912, Hilario had become “Happy” Reyes, a Spanish politician, and had since served in every state administration, only once falling as low as judge. Since Roosevelt’s second term, he’d become a Democrat. He was ancient and vigorous, as powerful as a joker in the deck, a worn but still potent magician, an evil Jiminy Cricket.

“To the home of the brave.” Joe picked up his drink.

“I want you to fight, Joe. I have a boy from Texas. Natural southpaw. Fast. Knocks them out with either
hand. Hasn’t had a fight that’s gone four rounds. Works up on the Hill with you.”

“You’re setting up fights again?”

“Joe, it’s the spirit of the times. Entertainment. Baseball hasn’t stopped. There’s a one-armed outfielder playing for the St. Louis Browns right now. Hasn’t stopped baseball.” After years of wearing his white planter’s hat, like a girl holding a parasol against the sun, Hilario’s brown skin had become bleached to a pallor that made his eyes, which were black as tar, all the more piercing. “Joe, when you’re as old as I am, you find out that people lead very short lives.”

“I noticed that on Bataan.”

“Then the experience wasn’t wasted. Now it’s time again for fun. I want you to meet a fan of yours.”

“Harry Gold.” Hilario’s friend popped out from behind the stool. Gold was short, swarthy and so fat that he looked inflated inside his double-breasted suit. He wobbled on new boots and removed a new Stetson to shake Joe’s hand. His hair was dark and wavy.

“Harry’s a New York Jew,” Hilario said.

“I saw you play with Charlie Parker on Fifty-second Street,” Gold told Joe. “And a couple of weeks ago, at the Casa Mañana. I always wondered what happened to you.”

“Joe used to be the Indian Joe Louis until that nigger music got to him. Joe, you’re still popular. That boy has beaten everyone in the state. You’re the only action left.”

“Hilario, I haven’t fought for two years.”

“That’s not so dangerous for a fighter of your quality. Anyway, you’re like a thoroughbred coming down in class.”

“The comeback of Chief Joe Peña?”

“Don’t laugh, I can set it up in two days and guarantee you two thousand dollars just for showing up and lying down.”

“I’m looking for investment opportunities in New Mexico,” Gold said to Joe.

“Why don’t you just put your money directly into Hilario’s pocket?”

“That’s your problem, Joe,” Hilario said. “You don’t know how to boost your own home state. Word is, some black marketeer is dealing high explosives to the Indians. There are legitimate businessmen who can’t get explosives during wartime—contractors and developers, men with money. I want to give you this opportunity, Joe, because that Texas boy is going to beat the shit out of you.”

As Joe worked his way back across the lobby the special agents were rereading their sports pages. The headline folded over was
B-29S
POUND NIPS
. A circle of ladies in crocheted dresses were retreating from an Indian selling necklaces. His hair tied back in a single gray braid, his dirty shirt buttoned at the neck, he offered them first one arm draped with turquoise strands, then the other. Together, ladies and Indian moved past the poster of a flamenco dancer and through the doubleglass doors that led to the La Fonda dining room.

Joe meant to only glance in. There were about twenty
tables, enough to assemble a miniature, artificial Santa Fe: society Spanish in heirloom mantillas, artists who had fled New York, cultists who had fled California, lawyers not sharp enough to practice anywhere else, all sitting in the glow of stamped-tin chandeliers. The ladies found a table. The Indian stood at it, bringing forth silver rings and pins in his hand. From the table nearest the kitchen Harvey waved a clarinet. With him were Klaus Fuchs and the woman from the car, Anna Weiss. They were having after-dinner coffee.

“Back in business.” Harvey held the instrument out for Joe’s inspection. It was a used PanAmerican with a chrome-edged bell, the basic high-school model. “Picked it up in the pawnshop.”

“This ought to strike terror in the Emperor’s heart,” Joe said and handed the clarinet back. “Feeling okay?”

“We had a premature detonation on the test range this afternoon,” Harvey explained to Anna. He looked up at Joe. “Just the bloody nose. I’m fine. Sit down.”

“The sergeant has other duties, I’m sure,” Fuchs said.

Anna Weiss said, “Sit, please.”

She wasn’t a rosy English fair. Not pallid, either. More of a smooth china paleness, made all the more startling by her hair, black as an Indian’s but finer, and rakishly set off by a red lacquer comb. She wore a Hawaiian shirt with red palm trees. The ensemble had a go-to-hell quality that would test the nerve of any escort, let alone a stuffed shirt like Fuchs. At least her accent was softer than his.

“Through his clear thinking and quick actions, Dr.
Pillsbury saved the lives of a great many men this afternoon,” Joe said as he sat. He laid his newspaper on the table.

“You didn’t tell us, Harvey,” Anna said.

“Tell them, Harvey,” Joe said. “How you doused the cordite.”

“No, no.” Harvey had been drinking. A blush rose from his neck up. “Joe’s the real war hero.”

“I saw him in action this morning,” Anna said. “He defeated a car.”

“It’s unbelievable they let him in.” Fuchs had yet to acknowledge Joe’s presence, and now he stared at a new irritation.

The old Indian stood at the table and displayed his arms laden with necklaces, nodules of blue and green turquoise on knotted string. Cleto was a Santo Domingo man, and the Domingos sold jewelry up and down the Rio and even into Navajo country in Utah. His eyelids were low and his shirt was stained with trails of brown chili sauce, but the ribbons in his hair were bright. The La Fonda not only suffered Cleto, but prompted him to approach guests as long as he did so with a minimum of contempt.

“How much?” Joe asked.

“Two dollar.” Cleto laid the necklaces on the table.

“Ridiculous.” Fuchs picked up a string and held it close to the candlelight. He scratched a stone with his fingernail. “You know what turquoise is?” he asked Cleto.

“Turquoise.”

“Turquoise is, in fact, a phosphate of copper and aluminum.”

“One dollar.” Cleto shrugged.

“See, you didn’t even know what you were selling. I just told you; you should pay me. I’ve seen these stones. They change color, they fade, they’re hardly diamonds. They’re stones off the ground.”

“Not off the ground.” Joe lifted a necklace. “They have to mine them. The old way is to build a fire against the rock, then throw water on the rock. The rock shatters and you see a seam of fresh turquoise like a blue stream of water. It would be easier to use explosives, but they’re impossible to get now.” He put two dollars on the table and gave the necklace to Anna Weiss. “For you.”

“You’re a gentleman, Sergeant. Thank you.”

She slipped the turquoise string over her head and inside the collar of her shirt. The stones were mixed: evening-blue, blue-weed blue, mountain-lake blue, corngreen. With the shirt and comb, she looked like a beautiful ragpicker of all nations.

Cleto quickly gathered the necklaces and money from the table and moved away.

Fuchs took a deep breath. “Sergeant, sometimes your simpleness seems almost clever. You have what we called in Germany a ‘peasant wit.’ Do you understand? But there is a great difference between cleverness and intelligence. Where you see pretty stones, I do see phosphate. Where you see ‘longhairs,’ I see an elite. To be honest, the war will be won by intelligence, by science,
not by soldiers. Not to denigrate anybody’s sacrifice.”

“Klaus, we’re all soldiers fighting for the same cause,” Harvey said.

“And we all have different causes.” Fuchs turned to Anna Weiss. “Take the necklace off, it looks foolish.”

“Willst Du lieber einen gelben Stern haben?”
she asked.
“Oder einen roten?”

At the sound of German the entire dining room fell silent. In the hush, Harvey whispered, “Joe, that old guy with the necklaces stole your newspaper.”

“You’re seeing things. You need a cure,” Joe said. “Let’s get out of here. Let me take you up to some hot springs, some sacred healing waters. You’re invited too,” he told Anna Weiss and Fuchs.

“Impossible,” said Fuchs.

“When?” Harvey asked.

“Right now,” Joe said. “Tonight. I’ll lead you in the jeep.”

Anna Weiss said, “Yes.”

High above the Jemez road, a hot spring poured into a well of rock. Pink coralroot crept out of pine needles. Spruce bough and moon floated on sulfurous steam.

Joe was already in the black water. Harvey bobbed like a rubber duck. Anna Weiss laid her clothes on the edge and stepped in. As she sank, her eyes looked directly into Joe’s and she said, “Joy through strength.” She went under and came up, her hair molded to the sides of her face.

“Too bad Klaus didn’t want to come up from the car,” Harvey said. “He’s getting a little testy. It’s the pressure from Trinity. Only a month to go.”

“Why Trinity?” she asked. “Why does Oppy call the test site that?”

“From an English sonnet. By John Donne, according to Oppy,” Harvey said, and mimicked Oppy’s hoarse whisper. “ ‘Batter my heart, three person’d God, for you as yet but knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend.’ ”

“Doesn’t it have a name already?” Anna asked.

“Stallion Gate,” said Joe.

“An American name. I like that better.”

“So do I.”

“This is the perfect example of average temperature,” Harvey said. “Half of me is cooking and half of me is freezing, but the average is very comfortable.”

Every time one of them stirred, water—pungent, buoyant, black—spilled from the well and over moss soaked with the same sharp smell. Between branches they could see the peaks of the Jemez, some hanging in shadow, some shining with scree. Clouds on an easterly wind made the mountains move forward like a wave.

“There was a volcano here as big as Everest about a million years ago.” Joe spread his arms along the rim of the well. “When it blew, it threw rocks as far as Kansas. There’s still a volcanic vent beneath us.”

“Like a deep-banked ember,” Anna said.

“And all these hills are sacred to the old people. Shrines in the caves. You never know what you’re going to stumble into. My father and I were hunting one day when we both fell into a hole. A hole in the ground, dust swirling around. We’d fallen into an old kiva. We were sitting on the floor of it. All around us were these figures. A man with blue skin, blue as a bluebird, and the head of a buffalo. A purple swallow with the head of a girl. A mountain lion sitting like a man. The kiva could have been five hundred, maybe a thousand years old, but the colors were as bright as if they’d been painted the day before. In about an hour they faded. In two hours you could hardly see them. I couldn’t even
find the place now. It’s filled in with dirt and disappeared, but there are more.”

Joe was surprised at himself for telling the story. First, that he remembered it. Second, because it smacked of noble-red-man-seduces-tourist. Maybe that’s what he was trying to do, though. Obviously that’s what he was after.

“What is the religion here?” Anna asked. “Was Adam created on the sixth day? Was Eve created from his rib?”