His grandniece had managed to live with the old man for two full years after coming to the United States to finish her high school career, a remarkable accomplishment for a teenager, even one such as herself who’d grown up in a tiny Mexican village with few amenities of its own.
It wasn’t Reubén’s usual day-to-day living habits that worried me. The old man didn’t come into town often, and certainly not in the middle of the night. The drive from his small ranchito to Posadas was a fair chore for someone his age-rough two tracks down to the county gravel, then the miles north to Posadas on a sometimes busy state highway.
I knew the old man to be an early riser, often on the job with the dawn. The border crossing opened at six a.m., and if he was working in Mexico, he and his little white Isuzu-Chevy would be parked there ready to go, loaded with ladders, his battered wheel barrow, shovels, picks, and all the other accoutrements of his masonry. And by that time, he’d have sampled the brew, lacing his morning coffee. He tumbled into bed with the sunset.
His abrupt change of habit tweaked my curiosity. If I drove far enough southwest on State 56, I’d reach Regál, another tiny village nestled on the south flank of the San Cristóbals, within shouting distance of the border crossing that took Reubén to Mexico.
I didn’t let the grass grow, giving 310 a little exercise. Mindful of the desert zoo, I played the spotlight down the shoulder of the road ahead of me, sweeping from side to side to catch the reflection of tiny eyes. They’d bolt, or maybe freeze in place, thinking that the inexplicable oncoming beast would pass harmlessly over their heads. Out past Wayne Feeds, a business that struggled as our county’s economy collapsed, around the bulk of Arturo Mesa to the south and the remains of Moore, a three-family community long turned to dust north of the highway, I crossed the Salinas arroyo on a new state highway bridge that was entirely up to code, unlike the one I’d pondered earlier near María. I saw a set of taillights appear ahead, and overtook the little white truck before we’d covered another mile.
Reubén Fuentes drove like a man who wasn’t sure exactly where he was-and no matter how sober he might be, twenty miles an hour on a state highway was too slow. The truck wobbled now and then, little jerky motions rather than the vague drifting of an inebriated motorist.
A car that comes up behind you like a rocket, then slows without passing, isn’t apt to be your Aunt Minnie. Reubén figured it out without my having to announce my presence with a light display. In a mile or so, his brake lights flared and he pulled onto the wide shoulder. I did the same, keeping a respectful distance behind him when I turned on the flashers.
“PCS, three-ten will be with New Mexico Charlie Frank Nora triple eight, mile marker nineteen, State Fifty-six. Negative twenty-eight.” Ernie didn’t need to run a wants-and-warrant on the registration for me. I didn’t see a current ’89 sticker on the license plate, but the old man probably had it still in the envelope, stuffed in the glove box. Or perhaps not. Just then, I didn’t really want to know. Reubén’s license plate was worn and dented, and of course the little bumper bulb didn’t work.
I’d chewed butt often enough with my deputies, reminding them that, no matter how innocent the circumstances, there was no such thing as a routine traffic stop. I’d told them that enough that I believed it myself. Only one head nodded in the cab, but who knew-an armed felon might be crouched in the passenger seat, waiting for my approach, or lying flat in the truck bed, shotgun at the ready. A little paranoia is a good thing.
“Ten-four, three-ten. When you’re finished there, are you ten-eight?”
“That’s negative.”
“Ten-four.” Ernie Wheeler sounded disappointed that I wasn’t available for calls, as if he’d lined up a fair night’s work for me.
By the time I made sure my vehicular office was secure and stepped out into the night air, Reubén had the driver’s door open, propping it with one boot. As I approached along the shoulder, he turned, putting both feet on the ground and his right forearm on the door.
“Don’t you ever go to bed?” he asked. His absolute calm and innocence might have been the old man’s best defense when dealing with Mexican authorities. A true viejo inofensivo, I’d heard him called. No doubt when he crossed the border, he was a bit more discreet with the handgun.
“Reubén, how are you doing this fine night?” I watched as he pushed himself to his feet, staggered just a little and caught his balance by putting an elbow against the cab. Sure enough, Deputy Mitchell was right-the old man was wearing cheap cotton gloves, and he avoided touching them to the truck.
“Not so good, Sheriff. Not so good. I did a stupid thing.”
“Really? I would have thought as old as we are, we’d have learned to stop doing stupid things.”
Reubén laughed a silent little shake of amusement. “You’d think that.” He leaned his forearms on the edge of the truck bed. “Can’t even light a cigarette. Maybe I should quit.” He reached up and touched his right wrist to his breast pocket, where the smokes were stashed. I didn’t offer, since I knew what would happen.
“So what did you do to yourself?”
“Ay,” he muttered. “I got lazy.” He looked up at me as I joined him at the leaning post. Half my size, dressed in khaki shirt and trousers, he wore the aroma of sweat and wine the way modern man wears aftershave. With the back of his hand, he touched me on the arm, a substitute for a handshake. “We’re working on the iglesia, down in Tres Santos.”
“That’s a tough job,” I said. The little mission was ancient, adobe, and had suffered from lackadaisical maintenance over the years. Massive as adobe is, gravity eventually always wins.
He nodded with a philosophical shrug.
“How’s Teresa?”
“She’s good. She’s good. She doesn’t teach any more. Did you know that?”
“I did.” I’d met Estelle Reyes’ stepmother a couple of times, always in Reubén’s company. I remember that she had long, iron-gray hair tied up in a bun, and snappy eyes with a mass of crinkles in the corners-a formidable boss of the tiny classroom.
“On that one wall, that’s where the trouble is,” he said, and I assumed he was referring to the church, not Estelle Reyes’ stepmother.
“After two hundred years, we all crumble a little bit.”
“Ay, that’s true. We built a buttress-on both sides. That little church looks more like a fortress now.” He chuckled.
“Who’s working with you on that?”
He puffed out his cheeks. “Two of the Fernandez boys. You know them.” I didn’t, but Reubén continued on. “And Benny Orasco. He’s got that big backhoe. He’s got a couple of boys who work with him, on and off.”
“So how did you hurt yourself?”
He sighed and regarded his gloved hands. “We’re doing the plastering.” His accent savored each syllable. He and Sheriff Eduardo Salcido probably enjoyed slow-talk contests now and then. “And the detail work around the windows on the east side. You know, make it just right.” It would be, too, with Reubén’s touch.
“They don’t make good gloves any more,” he added. “My hands got wet, and in that lime all day long…” He made a grimace. “There are places around the windows where only the hands can make the shapes. And now…ay, like fire.”
“The plaster burned your hands, you mean?”
He nodded. “I had some aloe verde, but then I ran out. They don’t make that like they used to.”
“I see the word aloe on enough labels,” I said. “Did you stop by the emergency room?”
“The hospital? No. Why would I do that? That’s the big money, that place.”
Reubén pushed himself away from the truck. “I found something at the store just now. Let me see if you think it’ll work.” He bent into the truck and I heard a groan unsuccessfully stifled. He backed out holding a bag between two fingers and extended it toward me. I pulled out the plastic bottle of hand cream and turned it so the headlights illuminated the label. Clinical strength, healing formula,
bla, bla, bla. Whether it would sooth lime-burned skin was a stretch.
“Let me see,” I said. “Can you slip one of the gloves off?”
He flinched at the thought. “I think I’ll just take myself home,” he said. “I got some aspirin, and I got this. That’ll be okay.”
And I knew damn well that wasn’t all he had. “You’re working tomorrow?”
He took a long time answering. “I don’t think so. We’ll see.”
“So, now we get you home. You’re not driving so good, Reubén, and you have a lot of miles to go, on the worst roads.”
“I’ll take my time.”
“Nope. I don’t think so. Tell you what, my friend. Let me run you home.” I knew what Eduardo Salcido would say about a county taxi service, but what the hell. It was expedient. “We’ll move the truck a little farther off the shoulder, and I’ll have your grandniece come out in the morning to check on you and help you bring the truck home. How about that?”
“Estellita told me that she was going to work for you.”
“For the county, yes sir. Quite a young lady she’s turned out to be.”
“Yes. She doesn’t live with me any more.” It was as wistful as I’d ever heard Reuben.
“I know she doesn’t.”
“I was hoping she would stop by tonight, but she didn’t. Always in a hurry, that girl. She could live with me and still work anywhere in the county.”
“Well, maybe so. That’s between the two of you.” I couldn’t imagine it, but stranger things have happened. One of the major requirements of law enforcement is the long, hot shower, both to calm the nerves and to wash off the stink of nasty predicaments. Somehow, Estelle Reyes had managed to survive two years with her uncle-two years of high school with its peer pressures and other crap, while at the same time managing her personal life in her uncle’s rustic paradise. Using the showers in the high school’s girls’ locker room must have served the purpose, but after that, a college dorm would have seemed opulent. I couldn’t imagine her going back to the tiny cabin hidden among the piñons and junipers, sleeping on a sofa and looking forward to a nice hot sponge bath out of an enameled basin come morning.
“Let me give you a ride, Reubén. She’ll be out first thing in the morning. We’ll get those hands of yours fixed up.”
He didn’t argue. That told me how miserable he felt. I pulled his truck well off the highway. Now we had Jack Newton’s Cadillac on one side of the county and Reubén’s battered truck on the other. It seemed to me that things tend to go in series-a string of break-ins, a wash of domestic disputes, all the county’s speeders congregating on the same stretch of highway. This happened to be geriatric alcoholic week.
Half an hour later, with the inside of my car smelling like old man, I pulled to a stop at the foot of a small mesa a mile or so off County 14. My headlights illuminated the squat adobe, rock, and log cottage, the back of the dwelling backed tight against a rock outcropping. A canopy of runty, gnarled trees found enough moisture in the cracks and crannies. An electric line ran along the two-track, and looped into the side of the building. At least there was that.
In 1930, when Spartan living was a way of life in the rural west, the place would have seemed cozy, even hospitable. Now, more than half a century later, with lives flooded with cheap luxuries, Reubén’s home was an anachronism, damn near a tourist attraction.
Two dogs stood at silent alert, tails waiting, and when they saw-or smelled-my passenger, they did their dog-thing, becoming dervishes of greeting.
He hesitated, half in and half out of my car. “What am I going to do about my truck? My tools…”
“We’ll get ’em back to you,” I promised. That’s the trouble with starting the taxi service, I would admonish deputies. One thing leads to another, and pretty soon you have a snarl. Good deeds rarely go unpunished.
“I guess I can take the old Jeep down. But I hate to do that.” The ‘old jeep’ was just that, a topless old buggy with the seats showing springs in a dozen places. It was parked beside the house, its license clearly expired. I knew it was a ’47, worth something now to a collector who might restore it. A bullet crease on the flat of the left front fender drew my eye. I knew how it had gotten there, and if either of the Hidalgo brothers were still alive, they’d probably welcome the chance for another try.
“Let Estelle help you with all this,” I said.
“Maybe she’ll stop on her way back,” the old man said. “She went down to talk with her mother.”
“Maybe she’ll do that.” What the hell. Dump all this on the young lady, who certainly had a full plate at the moment without worrying about her great-uncle. I left the old man safe in his own home with his aloe hand cream and bourbon, and by the time 310’s tires chirped back onto the state highway, it was nearly 1:30 in the morning. When I saw Estelle at the office in the morning, we’d take care of the truck.
Chapter Twenty-four
Estelle Reyes appeared at the dispatch desk at 7:30 that Thursday morning looking well rested, well groomed, and just generally goddamned breathtaking, wide-eyed with interest for what the day might bring. For a moment, she seemed about 12 years old, eyes taking in everything and everyone.
She wore a conservative tan pants suit and a simple white blouse with one button open below the businesslike collar, with no jewelry of any kind except a wristwatch. Her shoes were sturdy black oxfords polished to a military sheen, the cuffs of her trousers breaking over the tops in a fashion that brought joy to an old sergeant’s heart.
I stood in the doorway of my office, watching for just a moment as she chatted with Ernie Wheeler, who no doubt wished at just that moment that he was working days rather than the soon-to-end graveyard shift.
Estelle gripped a slender black briefcase, and I wondered what souvenirs she’d collected.
“Good morning,” I greeted her, and Ernie looked disappointed. T.C. Barnes, already on deck, had been told that most likely he would be enjoying the young lady’s company all day, and would present a comprehensive orientation. He was about to be disappointed, too.
“Good morning, sir.”
“Change of plans, by the way,” I said. “Come on in.” She followed me into my office, but didn’t take a chair. I waved her toward them, her choice, and she took the old wooden monstrosity to one side of the desk. “Before we get into anything else, I had a chat with your great-uncle early this morning. He managed to lime burn his hands at work down at the church, and he’d driven into town to find some ointment. He couldn’t drive worth shit, and I took him home. His truck is parked along 56, just beyond the bridge.”
“I saw it this morning on my way in,” she said. “Ernie told me what happened.”
“He’ll be all right, I’m sure. And your mother? She’s well?”
“She is.” Estelle held the briefcase in her lap, one hand over each latch, her body English saying that she wanted to open the thing. Maybe her mother had sent up a serving of galletas for us. I didn’t want to be sidetracked from the git-go, and handed the young lady a copy of the Simmons catalog that had been holding down the landslide of papers on the corner of my desk. “You’ll need a rig,” I said. A number of yellow tags marked various catalog pages. “We’re going to need to order soon if you want to be outfitted for the academy.” She hefted the catalog and tilted her head as she thumbed to the first tag.
“The deputies wear the line that starts on page nineteen. The one named ‘Desert Tan’, appropriately enough. You get the first three sets free, then two a year after that. Shirts, pants, shoes. The utility rigs are all on page twenty-eight, the line they call ‘Borderland.’ Stetsons are on page something. You’ll find ’em. It’s the off-white low crown.”
I grinned. “In case you’re marveling at my incredible memory, rest assured that I took a couple of minutes to look ’em up and mark ’em. Anyway, that’s what you’ll need for the academy starting in September, as well as a bunch of other things. Exercise sweats, that sort of thing. Barnes will
walk you through the paperwork. Do it sometime today.” She nodded and closed the catalog.
“One of these days when things slow down, Deputy Torrez and I will go out to the range with you and find out how much work needs to be done to make you safe with a three fifty-seven. I have some reservations about that, since your hands aren’t exactly hams.” I regarded her critically. It’s a hell of a note that someone’s good looks can actually be a liability, but she’d just have to work to overcome the challenge. The uniform might help. I’d always thought that uniforms, especially with gun belts loaded with twelve pounds of crap, did a good job of ruining a trim line. With my girth, I favored civilian duds.
“You’re going to have to be goddamn proficient with whatever weapon we find for you, because that’s what you’ll take to the academy. And that’s what you’ll have to qualify with for the department.” I sat down heavily behind my desk. “Although I’m here to attest that a goddamn blind man can qualify.”
The young woman absorbed all that without comment.
“And about the change of plans…there’s all the time in the world for office orientation, but what the hell. We dropped you into the middle of something yesterday, and it’s too good an opportunity to miss.” I nodded at her outfit. “That’s perfect, by the way. Looks sharp and professional. The sheriff wants you wearing a vest, so we’ll see what we have as a stopgap until you can order your own.” I looked at her critically again. Kevlar vests weren’t made for comfort, especially for folks who were blessed with curves-and at the risk of sounding like a chauvenist pig, she had curves. She’d end up like a Joan of Arc, trying to look like a boy in her French armor.
“All right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any questions?”
“As a matter of fact…“ She snapped the latches on the briefcase. “May I show you two photos?”
“Of course.”
The first, an eight-by-ten glossy surprised the hell out of me. I leaned back in the chair, examining the photo. “You took this when?”
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