The Sinister Pig - 15 (10 page)

“It’s Customs Officer Manuelito now,” Captain Largo said. “We lost her. And whatever is going on down there, if anything at all, it’s going to be a Customs case and not ours.”

“Not unless it connects with our homicide up here,” Chee said. “Not unless it gives us a way to—”

Captain Largo made a dismissive gesture. “A way to what? Solve an FBI felony case? Way to get Sergeant Chee back on the Bureau’s Bad Boy list? Why don’t you just call that young woman. Call her and give her a report on the situation on the telephone?”

“I did that,” Chee said.

Largo sighed, shook his head. “Oh, hell with it,” he said. “Give Officer Yazzie a rundown on anything pressing while you’re gone. And don’t drive one of our vehicles down there.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And tell Bernie we miss her,” Largo said.

Four hours later, Jim Chee was driving through Nutt, New Mexico, on Highway 26, taking advantage of the shortcut that took one from Interstate 25 to Interstate 10 without the long dogleg to Las Cruces, taking advantage of that five-mile-over-the-speed-limit State Police usually [89] allowed. He was in such a hurry that he barely noticed how the slanting light of the setting sun changed the colors of the Good Sight Mountains to his right, and lit the very tips of Massacre Peak to his left, and because he still hadn’t figured out how to deal with Bernadette Manuelito. Actually, he had figured it out five or six different ways. None of them seemed satisfactory. And now with the little town of Nutt miles behind him he was almost to Deming. Customs Agent Manuelito had said she would meet him at the coffee shop attached to the Giant Station just off the intersection. He had rehearsed how he would greet her, what he would say, all that. And then he had modified his plan because his memory of how she had sounded when he called her from Shiprock had changed a little. He’d been kidding himself when he thought she sounded so friendly.

Actually it had been all very formal except right at first. Bernie had said: “Would you believe I really miss you, Jim. Imagine! Missing your boss.” And he knew that polite pause between the ‘Jim’ and the ‘Imagine’ was there to give him time to say: “Bernie, I miss you too.” He’d wasted it by trying to think of exactly the right way to say it. Something to let Bernie know that he woke up every morning thinking about her, and how empty life seemed with her out of it. And while he was trying to think of how to say that, he said something like, “Ah,” or “Well,” and before he could get it together, Bernie was talking again. She’d said: “But we drive better vehicles down here, and this new boss is nice. He has a mustache.” And thus the call had ended with none of the things said he wanted to say and Chee feeling thoroughly stupid and forlorn.

[90] Chee spotted a new-model Ford 150 such as Bernie had described among the rows of huge eighteen-wheelers the coffee shop had lured off Interstate 10. He left his older and dirtier pickup near it, walked into the shop. It was crowded. Mostly men. Mostly truckers Chee guessed. Bernie was in a booth, her back to the door, listening to an older woman sitting opposite her. An Indian woman, but not a Navajo. Sort of resembled aZuñi. Probably an O’odham. That tribe had its reservation on the Mexican border, lapping over into Arizona. The woman noticed him, smiled, said something to Bernie. Probably telling Bernie the Navajo cop had arrived. Then she was gathering her things together, and Bernie was sliding out of the booth, coming toward him, smiling.

Chee sucked in a deep breath. “Hello, Bernie.”

“Hello, Jim,” she said. “This is my friend, Customs Officer Eleanda Garza. She lets me share her house down in Rodeo and she’s helping teach me to be a Customs agent.”

Chee took his eyes off of Bernie, saw Customs Officer Garza was holding out her hand, saying, “How do you do.”

Chee took it, said, “Pleased to meet you.”

“Have to be going,” Garza said. “I’ll leave you the booth.”

“You think we could find a quieter place?” Chee asked.

“I doubt it,” Bernie said. “It’s Friday night. Night for eating out in Deming. We’d probably have to wait an hour for a table.”

They took the booth, with Chee trying not to show his disappointment. She ordered iced tea. He ordered coffee, wound too tight for food. Then he worked through the [91]standard delivery of news about mutual friends and lapsed into silence.

“Your turn now,” Chee said. “Anything new with you before we get into what I want to tell you about. Are you having any problems?

She considered that a moment, smiled. “Well, to tell the truth, I managed to get lost and I never thought I could do that anywhere. But, you know, different landscape, different set of mountains, even worse roads than we were dealing with. In fact, that’s how I got to that Tuttle Ranch.” She laughed. “I was trying to follow the truck that was going there. Figured he was heading back to Interstate 10.”

“That’s the rich guy’s place? The one who’s raising exotic animals for his friends to hunt?”

Bernie nodded.

“Close to here? I want to see that some day.”

Bernie extracted a paper napkin from its holder and a pen from her purse. “Here we are,” she said, and sketched a map—a line going east representing I-10, an intersection identified with a state road number, another intersection with a county road number, and dotted lines for dirt roads. That done, she explained the landmarks. “Trouble is, when you get here”—she tapped the end of the last line with the pen point—“you come to a No Trespassing sign and a locked gate.”

“And where’s the watering station they were making?”

“About four miles in from the gate. You can’t see because it’s beyond a ridge. Anyway, they keep the gate locked. So first you have to persuade someone to let you in.”

[92] Chee picked up the map and studied it. Typical of Bernie, it was neatly done. He noticed Bernie was studying him, looking expectant. And looking beautiful, which made him even more nervous than he had been.

“You talk now,” she said. “You said you wanted to tell me something.”

Chee picked up his coffee cup, took a sip, cleared his throat. “Maybe we should get your supervisor in on that,” he said. “Mr. Henry, isn’t it?”

Bernie looked down at her hands for a moment, and then looked up at him. Expression strained. “Tell me first,” she said.

“Well, I pretty well already have,” Chee said.

“You just wanted to tell me about the name of the welding company being the same? That made you worry, I mean? Was there anything you didn’t want to say on a telephone line?”

What did that mean, Chee wondered. He laughed, shook his head, looked embarrassed. “That and some odds and ends.”

“You thought the line might be tapped?”

“I think that’s unlikely,” Chee said. “But then a few days ago I would have thought it highly unlikely that a fellow on the Jicarilla Reservation could find a credit card in a garbage can, use it to buy gas, and within three days somebody in Washington knows where he used the card.”

Bernie’s eyebrows raised. She said: “Did that happen?” And then: “Whose card was it?” But she didn’t sound as if she cared.

“A fellow who seems not to have existed,” Chee said. “At least the local FBI folks who’re in charge of the case aren’t saying.”

[93] Bernie held up her hand. “OK. Start at the beginning. But before you do, and before you decide whether you want Supervisor Henry in on all of this, would it help you to know that Henry grilled me about why I followed that welding truck out to the Tuttle Ranch. He said Customs, or anyway our local Customs crew, has a special deal with that ranch. And he had me give him all the photos. Like the ones I sent you. Even the negatives.”

Early in this discourse, Chee had leaned forward, intent. Now he said: “Special deal?”

“He said Tuttle’s watering holes for the animals attract dehydrated illegals,” Bernie said. “So Tuttle’s ranch hands watch for that and tip off Customs. In return, Customs doesn’t go onto the ranch.”

Chee was frowning. “Did Henry already know you’d taken the pictures? Or did you volunteer that?”

Bernie leaned back in the booth. Shook her head. “I should have thought of that,” she said. “I really don’t remember. I had brought them along to show him, but I sort of think he’d brought it up first.”

“Did you notice anything especially interesting about the welding truck?”

She shook her head. “Nothing I saw. And the only pictures Mr. Henry remarked about were a shot of an oryx and one of a sort of worn-out tire track. A sort of recapped tire repair done in Mexico. He said it was like one on a truck they were watching for.”

“Not the welding truck?”

“No. Then he asked me if this was all of my pictures, and I said except for a couple of negatives that didn’t come out, and he put the pictures and the negatives back into the sack and into his desk drawer.”

[94] “Same sack the developer put them in?”

“Yes,” Bernie said, and then paused and grimaced. “And now you’re going to ask if it was one of those two-prints-for-the-price-of-one deals, and I’ll say yes, and you’ll say then Mr. Henry will know there’s another set of those pictures somewhere.”

“Yeah,” Chee said. “But it probably doesn’t matter.”

“I hope not,” Bernie said. “Except him wondering why I misled him.” She was remembering the“TWO PRINTS—ONE PRICE” printed in big red letters on the sack she had given Henry.

“Anyway, I think we should have this conversation without inviting Mr. Henry into it unless we see some way he can help solve the puzzle.”

Chee had lost his focus on the puzzle, let his mind wander, thinking that Bernie was even more ... More what? Beautiful than he’d remembered? Well, yes. But that wasn’t it. Not exactly. In a Miss America contest, Janet Pete would have won. Representing perfection. Polish. Suavity. And if the pick was based purely on the sensual, then Mary Landon would wear the crown. He’d never forget the day he met her. Looking for a suspect at the Crownpoint rug auction where Mary was—as he finally realized—looking for the proper trophy to take back to Wisconsin to sire her Wisconsin children. And Janet, the half-Navajo vision of high-society sophistication, seeking the appropriate Navajo male willing to be taught the value system of urbane America. Ah, he missed them both. Either one would have been far better than this loneliness he was living through now. Who the hell was he to think he could find the perfect love? To think Bernie would settle for him. How many men found [95] perfection? Well, there was Lieutenant Leaphorn and Emma, maybe. Did he think he could match the Legendary Leaphorn?

Chee noticed Bernie had stopped talking. Her face had flushed. She ,was staring at him. Just, he realized, as he’d been staring at her.

“Well?” Bernie said.

“I’m sorry,” Chee said.

“Well, what do you think?”

A bunch of youngish people a table away had settled their division of their joint check and were noisily preparing to leave. “I was thinking of you, Bernie,” Chee said. “I was thinking you’re wonderful.” But he said it well under the clamor of the departure.

Bernie gave the departees an irritated glance.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t understand that.”

“I think I’d like to see if your boss knows how we can find Seamless Weld,” Leaphorn said.

Bernie considered that. “But how do you do that without explaining why you’re curious. Letting him know I sent you that picture?”

Chee had a sudden idea. “Maybe then he’d fire you,” he said. “Then I could get you to come back and work for me.”

He knew by the time he finished that it hadn’t been a good idea. Bernie’s face was flushed again.

“One of Sergeant Chee’s officers?” she said, in a tone that was approximately neutral.

“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” Chee said. “I mean we’d be glad to have you back. Captain Largo said so too.”

But the mood had changed now. Bernie said he must [96]be worn out, hard drive and all. And she had a busy day herself tomorrow. Chee asked if they could get together tomorrow night. Now that they weren’t wearing the same uniform, maybe they could have a dinner date. Anyway, he wanted to talk to her again. With that, Bernie drove away in her Ford 150, and Chee took his pickup back to the Motel
6,
went to bed, and—feeling more like a damn fool, a cowardly damn fool—he tried to sleep.

Eleanda Garza’s voice was cool and efficient.

“I’m sorry, Sergeant Chee,” she said. “Bernie’s not here.”

“She’s not? Ah, where can I—”

“If you called, she said to tell you she had to go to a meeting. For the new CPOs. A training session, I think it is.”

“Oh. Ah, well, do you know when she will be back?”

He had tried to keep the disappointment out of his voice. Apparently he’d failed. Mrs. Garza’s tone changed from cool to sympathetic. “I think this thing just came up suddenly. You know how it is when you work in law enforcement.”

“Well, thank you, Mrs. Garza. It was good to meet you. Did Bernie leave a message?”

“I don’t think she had time. I think she really wanted to talk to you.”

“Thanks,” Chee said.

[98] “I’ll tell her you called. And please try again. It’s lonesome down here for Bernie.”

Chee sat a moment looking at the telephone, feeling even more disgusted with himself, and with fate, than he had when he woke up. He paid his motel bill, put his stuff into his bag, the bag into his pickup, and began the drive northward from the very bottom of New Mexico toward its top—a long, lonely drive back to his empty trailer home under the cottonwood trees beside the San Juan at Shiprock. Empty and untidy and cramped and silent. At Lordsburg, he pulled into a service station, filled his tank, and sat awhile studying the map Bernie had sketched on her napkin. He would delay the depressing arrival at his trailer by finding the formal entrance to the Tuttle Ranch. He’d use another couple of hours finding the place on the other side of that huge spread where Bernie had caught up with the Seamless Weld truck.