by John Nichols
“I’ll decide what makes sense,” Trucho said. “Is Montana back yet?”
“Not that I know of. I assume he’s still out with the posse.”
“Why don’t you try calling Bernabé Montoya on the phone,” Trucho said sarcastically.
“Sure. I’ll do that soon as I hang up—”
“Look, hold him there for a while. Kill him if he tries to walk out the door. I want to go over everything we got in this case and consult with a few people.”
“Anything you say,” Koontz said. “But what’ll I tell Mondragón?”
“Tell him it’ll be aggravated assault or something. Be vague. Like I said, Pacheco refuses to die. But don’t let that little S.O.B. out of your sight. I’ll get back to you real soon. Stick around the phone, because if I have to try and communicate through that asshole Cisneros I’m liable to have heart failure. I mean, don’t go back up to Louie’s with Joe for a piece of birthday cake or something, comprendes?”
“Yeah, okay. Whatever—” Koontz said.
He hung up and told Joe: “You’ll have to stick around for a while until we get some things straightened out.”
“Am I under arrest?”
“Let’s just say that right now you’re cooperating with us.”
“I’m not under arrest—?”
“I told you—” Koontz began.
“If I’m not under arrest I’m getting out of here,” Joe said.
“In that case you’re under arrest.”
“What for?”
“Aggravated assault, assault and battery, flight to avoid prosecution, resisting arrest, suspicion of attempted murder, conspiracy, attempted manslaughter, illegal use of irrigation water, discharging a weapon within city limits, and destruction of private property—namely, Pacheco’s pig. Will that be enough for you or do you want me to start running down some of the peripheral charges that could go along with the major ones?”
Joe snarled, “You can’t put any of that on me.”
Koontz, who angered almost as quickly as Joe, said, “We can cut you up in eight seconds and spread you out on the highway for crowbait if we want, so you just shut up and siddown right where you are until we get a couple things straightened out around here!”
Eloy Quintana shrugged and put his hand on Joe’s shoulder. “Siéntate, primo. What the hell.”
But Nancy stalked to the counter behind which Bill Koontz was standing, and, eyes narrowing, she hissed, “Listen, chota, you don’t talk to my husband like that—”
“Okay!” Koontz swung fast around the counter, and, pointing at her, Eloy Quintana, and Jimmy Ortega, he said, “You, you, and you—out! You want to sit in the truck, go sit in the truck. But get out of here. Pronto. Vamoose, unnerstand? You don’t, and you’re under arrest for disobeying the order of a police officer.”
“He gets a phone call,” Nancy said.
“Yeah,” Joe said. “I want my phone call.”
“You’ll get it when I’m ready to give it to you,” the state cop said. “Now tell your wife and these two men to get the hell out of here, Joe, otherwise you ain’t getting so much as a flea on a donkey’s ass, savvy?”
“Hey, you son of a bitch, you can’t talk that way in front of my wife—”
Eloy Quintana put his arm around his sister, motioned to the teen-ager to follow, and started outside. Jimmy Ortega got up slowly, arrogantly; eyes narrowed and lips in a sneer, he gave the cop a bitter glance, then sauntered slowly, tauntingly, out. Joe stared at the cop for a good ten seconds, then said “Huh!” and suddenly sat down, picking up a magazine again. Bill Koontz went to the front door to make sure Nancy, the brother-in-law, and the kid got in the truck.
They did. But as they closed the door another old pickup and then another turned off the highway and parked next to Eloy Quintana’s vehicle. There were a couple of old men at the wheels of these trucks, some younger men, and a fat belligerent-looking woman on the seat beside one of them. They nodded and smiled at the passengers in the Quintana vehicle, then the woman and two men got out and walked over to the Quintana pickup and started to talk. Two more trucks, one a one-ton flatbed carrying two bundles of unedged pine slabs, pulled in almost immediately, and several more old men got out and came over to talk. One of the old men, wearing a torn and dirty sheepskin jacket, had on a gun belt; in all the truck cabs, gun racks held rifles.
Bill Koontz locked the front door and turned to Joe. “Those your friends out there?”
Joe looked up and gazed out the window with veiled, nonchalant eyes. He shrugged with an exaggerated lack of concern: “Yeah, those are my friends out there.”
“What do they want?” Koontz asked.
“Who knows?” Joe said, suddenly very interested in his magazine. “Maybe they just think the state cop pendejo factory is the most exciting show in town.”
“I hope to God, for your sake, that nothing funny starts to happen.”
“Why don’t you tell them to leave?” Joe said, laboring a little to queer his cocky grin.
“Sure. And if they don’t—?”
Joe couldn’t hold it back any longer. He lifted his head and allowed a cool-as-a-cucumber, on-top-of-the-world, infinitely arrogant shit-eating grin to illuminate his snotty features.
Marvin LaBlue in the Body Shop and Pipe Queen wrecker and two more muddy pickups swerved in and parked, then a 1957 Oldsmobile stripped of its fenders and muffler and riding high on its springs pulled up beside them, and six school-age youths including Benny Maestas got out and began sauntering loudly around, flicking combs through their hair and laughing raucously and adjusting the crotches of their tight trousers as they cast bold, threatening glances at the state police headquarters.
Bill Koontz told the dispatcher, “Get Chamisaville on that machine. Tell them to send up anybody they got available. Explain the situation.” Then he called up Bernabé Montoya in Milagro; Carolina answered.
“Listen, Caroline, this is Bill Koontz down in Doña Luz. Is Bernie back yet?”
“He just got in. You want to talk?”
“I sure do.”
She fetched him. “What’s the problem?” Bernabé asked, his voice trudging down the fifteen miles of telephone wire like a funeral dirge.
“I got Joe Mondragón sitting in the office here reading a magazine, and there’s about a dozen cars and trucks parked outside full of Milagro citizens who suddenly decided to come out of the woodwork, and I don’t like the looks of this one bit. I’m alone here with Emilio, so I figure you and Naranjo better get down here on the double, if that’s not too much to ask.”
Bernabé sighed, “Sure, Bill. Be right over.” And he hung up.
Most of the Senile Brigade, featuring Onofre Martínez and Tranquilino Jeantete in the cab of Onofre’s 1953 Chevy pickup, with the three-legged German shepherd atop the cab and Joe Mondragón’s gloomy uncle Juan F. Mondragón and the uncle’s friend Panky Mondragón in back, now arrived. No sooner had this truck found a parking place, than Ray Gusdorf, accompanied by Sparky Pacheco, Fred Quintana, Gomersindo Leyba, and Tobías Arguello quietly pulled in. And Ray had no sooner turned off his ignition, than Betty Apodaca’s pickup, carrying the Frontier barmaid, Teofila Chacón, and Amarante Córdova’s dying son, Ricardo, coasted to a stop nearby.
Staring out at all these new arrivals, Bill Koontz thought: Holy Cow, there’s more friggin hardware out there than we got in Vietnam!
“I want my phone call,” Joe said.
Koontz said, “When I’m ready, you’ll get it.” And he told the dispatcher, “See if you can get Bruno on the radio. Where’s his car at anyhow?”
“He was over at Dixonburgh talking with Carl Murphy, remember? They were thinking, maybe, of sending some of the guys from the Double T Ranch over there up to the Little Baldy Bear Lakes from that side. He hasn’t been in the car, though, for twenty minutes.”
Koontz dialed Carl Murphy’s number. “Hello, Carl?”
“Naw, this is Scotty Cotton. Carl, he’s busy right now.�
��
“This is Bill Koontz, State Police in Doña Luz, Scotty. Lemme talk with Bruno Martínez right away. It’s urgent.”
“Yes sir—”
The policeman waited nervously for about a minute.
“Bill—?”
“Yeah. Look, we got Mondragón, he’s sitting here in the office.”
“Well, hot dog—”
“Don’t celebrate too soon, Bruno. Maybe we also got a problem. There’s about thirty or forty of his neighbors sitting outside in a bunch of pickup trucks, and it looks like it wouldn’t take much for things to get ugly. So how about heading back here on the double.”
“I’m leaving right now, Bill. Hold the fort.”
Two more old and rusty cars pulled up in front of state police headquarters.
Koontz called Granny Smith at home. “Granny? We got Joe Mondragón. Yeah, yeah, I know, but we got trouble, too. A bunch of his friends are camped in maybe two dozen vehicles outside, and I’m here alone with Emilio, and I got the front door locked, but there’s a lot of guns out there—”
“Jesus! Look, don’t panic, Bill. I’ll be over as fast as I can. You call Bernie? He back yet?”
“He’s on his way. At least he said he was on his way. If he don’t fall flat on his face in a mud puddle or something.”
“See you in about five, then. For crissakes, stay cool, Bill. Whatever you do, don’t pull a gun.”
“I won’t if I don’t have to…”
The dispatcher said, “Sal Bugbee, Buddy Namath, and Ernie Maestas are all on the way.”
“It’ll take them half an hour to get here.”
“What about my phone call?” Joe wanted to know.
“When I’m ready you’ll get your phone call.”
“I got to take a leak,” Joe smirked.
“You know where the bathroom’s at.”
“Sure.” Joe grinned like a prince and cast a significant glance outside as he circled around the counter past Bill Koontz, who followed him to the john.
“How about a little privacy?” Joe complained.
“The door stays open.”
“What are you afraid of? You think I’m gonna crawl out that little window or something?”
“Take a leak if you want to take a leak,” Koontz said. “But hurry up about it.”
Joe took his own sweet time about it, flicked droplets of urine all over the floor, zipped up his pants with a flourish, and turned away without flushing the toilet.
“Flush it,” Koontz ordered.
“Flush it yourself. It’s your toilet, qué no?”
They stared, unmoving, at each other.
“You flush it, you half-pint piece of horseshit,” Bill Koontz said, unbuckling his holster’s safety strap and letting his fingers touch the butt of his pistol, “or I’ll crack your smart-ass fucking skull open.”
“Hey,” Emilio Cisneros called. “That lawyer just drove in.”
“Oh Christ—” Koontz jerked his head sideways. “Up front, Joe. Let’s go.”
“You getting a little nervous?” Joe asked solicitously.
Koontz didn’t answer. He followed Joe back out front and went over to open the door. Charley Bloom stepped through, and Koontz closed and relocked the door behind him.
“I’m Mr. Mondragón’s lawyer,” Bloom said. He extricated a cigarette, offered one to Joe, who declined, and to Koontz, who just batted the air irritatedly by way of refusal. “What are you holding Joe for?” the lawyer asked.
“We’re not really holding him for anything. He more or less just got here.”
“Well, if you haven’t charged him, Officer Koontz, I don’t think you can hold him.”
A state police car with the red light flashing bounced frenziedly off the highway, swung around the cluster of rattletrap vehicles, and screeched to a stop with its nose practically touching the front door. Bruno Martínez tumbled out, leaving the emergency flasher on, grabbed the doorhandle, and thudded loudly into the locked door.
“Hey—!” he scrawked, staggering back grasping his forehead where it had crashed against the glass.
“Hold your water,” Koontz snapped as he crossed the room and unlocked the door.
Bruno barged in, looking every which way, all out of breath.
“This is Mr. Bloom,” Koontz said, “Mr. Mondragón’s lawyer.”
“Yeah.” Bruno nodded perfunctorily at Bloom. “You get in touch with Trucho?”
“We talked—I dunno—maybe ten minutes ago.”
Another pickup, stacked high with green hay bales, pulled in, and Bernabé Montoya stepped out. The sheriff nodded to this man, that woman, slapped a teen-ager on the back and grinned, accepted a cigarette and a light, and said something joking to several old-timers on his way to the headquarters, reached for the handle, and walked into the locked door.
“Hey,” he muttered loudly. “Open the door.”
Bruno Martínez flipped the lock and Bernabé sidled in bent over, rubbing his knee. “The first thing I’d do,” he said bitterly, “is turn off that flashing light, unless you want to incite those people to riot.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot—” Redfaced, Bruno went out and attended to the matter.
“And the second thing I’d do,” the sheriff said, going over to flick an ash into the ashtray on the counter, “is I’d formally arrest José over there for assault or for discharging a weapon illegally or something, and then I’d release him on his own recognizance, or in the custody of his lawyer here.”
Bill Koontz was going to say something, thought better of it, turned to Emilio Cisneros, and muttered, “You heard him, make out the forms.” The dispatcher crossed to the typewriter, inserted some forms and carbon paper in the machine, and waited. Koontz motioned Joe over and had him empty his pockets onto the counter and take off his belt. Then, while he made up a possessions ticket, he fed down the time of arrest and other information to the dispatcher, who typed it out rapidly, one-finger style. When he had finished, he gave Joe a copy, just to check over the personal data, and Joe said:
“Right here, in this little box, you got it I’m white. I ain’t white, I’m brown.”
“You’re either white, or you’re black, or you’re oriental,” Bill Koontz said.
“I’m brown, you son of a bitch.”
“I think that about raps it up, qué no?” Bernabé Montoya said uneasily, edging between them and giving Joe a dark hairy eyeball. “I think Mr. Bloom and Mr. Mondragón ought to leave, now. So long, boys, you be careful on that road going back. And José—?”
Joe turned around at the door. “Yeah?”
“Stick around home, okay? This isn’t quite over yet.”
“Sure.” Joe grinned obnoxiously. “I lived here all my life, didn’t I?”
When they were outside, Koontz said, “I wonder if that wasn’t a dumb thing to do. I should of just put him in the car and took him down to Chamisaville.”
“He’s not going anyplace,” Bernabé said.
“I can’t help feeling he shouldn’t be out there with them—”
“This place was gonna explode,” Bernabé said. “You dumbbells were sitting on a stick of dynamite.”
“Suppose they don’t leave—?”
“They’ll leave. They’re not crazy. And anyway, they won.”
The policemen watched as Joe talked with a group of about ten people. Others just sat in their trucks, half-obscured behind dusty and cracked windshields, placidly looking on. One of Ruby Archuleta’s Milagro Land and Water Protection Association petitions was making the rounds, and, laughing triumphantly, people were signing like mad. Bloom hung back while Joe bragged about what he would have done to Koontz and the rest of the chotas if they had tried to work him over, but the lawyer also kept glancing nervously at the headquarters, waiting for somebody to rescind his noisy little client’s freedom; finally he got so nervous that he interrupted Joe’s animated obscene oration, suggesting it was about time everybody split.
“That lawyer,”
Bruno Martínez growled. “I’d like to cut his balls off.”
“Leave him alone,” Bernabé said. “It’s not gonna work out the way you wanted it to work out. But you can still salvage it, maybe. And that’s about all. Try for anything more and we’re all in a lot of hot water.”
Koontz sat down, lighting a cigarette. “You really think those people out there mean business?”
Bernabé said, “I know it. Did anybody here call the DA?”
“I talked with him yesterday,” Bruno said. “He and Trucho had talked. They were batting around an open charge of murder, but, you know how it is, that Pacheco won’t die.”
“The way I’d play it, if anybody asks me,” the sheriff said, despite the fact that nobody had asked, or was going to ask, “is I’d fine him for destruction of property, making a disturbance, and discharging a weapon within the town limits. The assault you got him on now won’t stick, not with those two witnesses.”
“Period—?” Koontz said glumly.
Bernabé stubbed out his cigarette and sucked in a deep breath, which he expelled very slowly, never having felt quite this heady before. “Listen,” he said quietly. “I sat in a room while that man of yours, that Montana fellow, outlined the plan he had. Now, I know somebody didn’t just make up those plans for fun and games, but I do know they didn’t work. And although personally I’ve kicked José Mondragón’s ass from here to breakfast and back again, I also realize times are changing and there isn’t room for the same type of people up here that there used to be when I was growing up. But that agent don’t understand the situation, and I don’t think any of you do either, and you’re in deep trouble if you let that boss of yours, that Trucho, shoot off his theories half-cocked. I know the Zopilote can win in Milagro, but after these couple of days I know he can’t win without a war, and wherever those orders on José came from, I know they came with the express intention of avoiding a war. Or a little revolution. Or whatever the hell it’s fashionable to call it these days—”
With that Bernabé suddenly walked outside and almost stunned everybody by signing Ruby Archuleta’s petition. But just as he was about to put his name on the wrinkled page, his steady salary as sheriff clobbered him like a stroke, and instead of signing, he read over the petition, nodded a sort of noncommittal approval, and, with an audible sigh, passed it on.
