Sulfur Springs

by William Kent Krueger

  The old miner nodded. “You must be Peter’s father.”

  “Gilberto Mondragón.” It was said with formality and a note of respect, and the two men shook hands. Mondragón looked at me. “Rodriguez?”

  After the incident at the El Dorado Mine, I’d called Rainy’s first husband, and we’d discussed options. The decision had been to bring Joaquin Rodriguez to the place Peter had been calling home for many months. Sylvester knew the way. We’d bound Rodriguez with duct tape and blindfolded him and tossed him onto the hard bed of the pickup. The ride hadn’t been a smooth one and, considering his broken arm and judging from his screams, must have been quite painful. Didn’t bother me in the least.

  I dropped the gate on the pickup bed. Mondragón and I slid Rodriguez out and stood him up. I cut the tape from his ankles, but left his wrists bound and his blindfold in place.

  “So you’re Joaquin Rodriguez,” Mondragón said, placing himself directly in front of the man.

  Rodriguez tilted his head, as if trying to place the voice.

  “Gilberto Mondragón,” Rainy’s ex said.

  Rodriguez spit at him, and Mondragón responded with a blow that sent the young man to the ground.

  I helped Rodriguez up. “You’re not doing yourself any favors.”

  “Bring him.” Mondragón started across the flat.

  Sylvester took an arm and escorted him on one side, while I took the other. Mondragón disappeared around a tall jumble of boulders, and when we followed, I saw the low entrance to an old digging. Rainy stood in the sunlight there. Although I’d seen her almost every day since we were married, my heart still did a little dance of joy. Peter limped from the dark of the mine tunnel and lifted a hand in greeting.

  After Rainy had given me a good long hug, we took Rodriguez into the tunnel. I was amazed at how Peter had made it a serviceable headquarters for himself. Two battery-powered lanterns supplemented the light that came in through the entrance. A two-burner propane camp stove sat on a large, flat stone. A cot with a sleeping bag stood against one wall. Canned and packaged goods were stacked neatly against the other wall, along with various other necessary living and medical supplies. Next to a collapsible camp chair stood a stack of books. Two more sleeping bags had been unrolled on the tunnel floor atop a foam mattress. The bags lay side by side. Rainy and Mondragón, I understood. I wondered what had happened to the safe house in Nogales and decided it must have been abandoned because of Peter. No comfortable safe house for him. And Rainy would not desert her son. So here they all were. One big happy family. I felt the demon of jealousy trying to whisper to me, but this time, that voice wasn’t so hard to silence. I loved Rainy deeply. I trusted her.

  We sat Rodriguez on the floor, his back against the tunnel wall, and left him blindfolded.

  “I interrogated him,” I said. “Got some interesting answers.”

  “Interrogated?” Rainy studied the man’s face in the lantern light. “How?” she asked with a suspicious note.

  “I had to cut him,” I admitted.

  “That’s exactly what I didn’t want to hear,” she said, her voice stone.

  “Only a little,” I said. “When I threatened to castrate him, he folded pretty quick.”

  “You would really have castrated him?” Her eyes were as hard as her voice.

  “If he didn’t, I would have,” Sylvester said.

  “So, here’s the deal,” I went on. “We were right on two counts. The Rodriguez family has been laundering money through someone in Coronado County. Joaquin doesn’t know who that is. Only his father and his father’s closest adviser know this.”

  “Who’s his closest adviser?” Mondragón asked.

  “Since Miguel was killed, it’s the son-in-law, a guy named Ernesto Rivera.”

  “I’ve met Rivera,” Mondragón said. “Very smart. Educated at Stanford, the business school there. A bit of a ladies’ man, considers himself charming. But with the scruples of a hyena.”

  An interesting characterization, I thought, especially considering that I would have described Mondragón in much the same way.

  “But why him?” Mondragón said. “Why not Joaquin? He’s truly family.”

  Rainy frowned. “And a son-in-law isn’t?”

  “Only technically,” Mondragón replied.

  “Joaquin’s father believes that his remaining son”—I looked down at the blindfolded man, who’d made it clear to me that he considered Ernesto Rivera a usurper. I thought about speaking the conclusion I’d come to myself, that a man who yielded secrets as easily as Joaquin was not a man to be relied upon, son or no. Instead I finished with—“has more important duties.”

  “And the other count we were correct on?” Mondragón said.

  “The stash of drugs. They’ve been using an old mine site for a while. They create a significant stockpile on this side of the border, then fly it out in one big shipment. But the most recent stockpile has disappeared. At first, they didn’t know who to blame. Then they found out Peter had filed on the old claim. Just like us, they couldn’t locate him. Until someone leaked the information about Peter and the Desert Angels and the rendezvous with the Guatemalans.”

  “Who?” Peter asked.

  “He doesn’t know. Miguel Rodriguez took charge of intercepting Peter, but his father insisted on being there, too. And we all know how that went down.”

  “How do they fly the product out?” Mondragón asked.

  This news was hard for me to deliver. “They use Jocko’s landing strip.”

  Peter looked stunned. “Jocko? I don’t believe it.”

  “Believe it,” Joaquin Rodriguez said.

  There was a look of smug satisfaction on Mondragón’s face when he said to his son, “How many times have I told you, trust no one but family.”

  Peter knelt and leaned close to Rodriguez. “If it’s true, why beat him up?”

  Rodriguez shrugged. “I can’t say. A warning, maybe, to a man whose feet were getting cold.”

  “Jocko.” This betrayal seemed to do a great deal more harm to Peter than anything physical he’d suffered. He stood up, looking just a little dazed. “Why?” It wasn’t a question addressed to any of us.

  After a moment, I said, “Marian Brown used some of that stashed product to entice Royal Diggs into recruiting White Horse for the ambush.”

  Rainy said, “I’d bet my last dollar that she filed the claim in Peter’s name in order to throw blame on him.” The tone of her voice told me that if Brown had been alive and male, Rainy might have been tempted to castrate her.

  To Rodriguez, I said, “Her murder, was that your father’s doing?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe Ernesto. With my father recovering from his wound, Ernesto is making decisions without seeking his approval first. Cabrón,” he said and spit on the tunnel floor.

  “The stash of drugs?” Mondragón said. “Do you know where Brown moved them?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Maybe whoever killed her got that from her before she died,” Sylvester suggested.

  “You have any idea who that might be?” I asked him.

  The old-timer shook his head. “So many possibilities.”

  Mondragón said, “We have much to discuss.”

  I glanced down at Joaquin Rodriguez. “Let’s talk outside.”

  Rodriguez said, “My arm is killing me. Can you help me, lady?”

  He may not have been the bravest of men, but he’d picked up quickly that Rainy was his only hope for any compassion.

  It was Mondragón who answered. “Be thankful you aren’t dead. Cabrón.”

  But Rainy added in a dispassionate tone, “Pain clears the mind and sometimes cleanses the spirit, Joaquin.” Then she joined us as we headed outside.

  We stood in the heat of the July afternoon. Above us, I could see clouds beginning to gather, mottling the blue of the sky. Another monsoon rain on the horizon, I figured. I thought about how tough it might be getting down off that mountain in a storm. What
ever we decided to do, we’d have to do it soon.

  “I want to talk to Jocko,” Peter said. “If he really betrayed me, I want to know why.”

  “If he betrayed you?” Mondragón looked coldly at his son. “How much more evidence do you need?”

  “I need to hear it from him.”

  “That won’t happen,” Mondragón said.

  “You’re my father, but you don’t speak for me.”

  They faced each other. I could see the father in the son, the same aquiline nose, dark eyes, firm-set mouth. In the silence of their confrontation, I heard the grating caw of a crow from somewhere above us.

  To my surprise, a smile graced the lips of Gilberto Mondragón. “You know, I spoke almost those same words to my father when he forbid me to marry your mother.” He stepped back and nodded. “You’re right. You are your own man.”

  “Can you take me, Cork?” Peter asked.

  “Yes. But there are still bodies at the El Dorado Mine that have to be dealt with.”

  Sylvester said, “I’ll take care of that.”

  “How?”

  “I’m thinking maybe an anonymous call to the Coronado Sheriff’s Office. I’m guessing they won’t be much surprised to learn that Sanchez’s been killed in a shoot-out with some Mexican drug hoodlums. You deal with that kind of low-life, your days are bound to be numbered.”

  I gestured toward the mine. “What about Joaquin Rodriguez?”

  “I think it’s time we dealt with his father,” Mondragón said. “We have leverage now.”

  “What are you thinking of doing, Berto?” Rainy asked.

  “We have Joaquin call his father and we meet for an exchange.”

  “What exchange?” she asked.

  “He gets his son back in return for a promise that our son will no longer be hunted.”

  “You’ll accept his word?” Rainy didn’t hide her skepticism.

  “Offering him his son is significant. And what I’ll make clear to him when we meet is that if our son is ever harmed, I will see to it that every member of the Rodriguez family is hunted down and killed.”

  “You would really do that?” Rainy stared at him. “I don’t know who you are now, Berto.”

  Mondragón said, “Perhaps you never did.”

  CHAPTER 37

  * * *

  Hell was in the east. The clouds were gathering, black and gray armies eager for battle. I thought I’d seen some bad storms in Minnesota, but what this desert could muster felt worse, maybe because it still seemed so unnatural to me. Worse also because this was a landscape unused to the run of big water. The ground was baked so hard and dry the moisture couldn’t soak in and rushed instead across the surface, etching deep channels, flooding washes, pouring itself into rivers that appeared like magic for a brief while and then vanished, leaving behind long, empty graves filled bank to bank with nothing but dust and tumbled rock. It was a land, I thought, where even what seemed to promise life could just as easily deliver death.

  We came down from the mountains slowly, carefully. Peter was quiet, and the sense I got from him, from the way he sat slumped, staring out the window, was one of despair.

  “Why are you here, Cork?” he finally asked.

  “Strange question.”

  “Mom, my father, they make sense. They’re my family. But the truth is, you don’t really know me. I’m nothing to you.”

  “Not true. You’re Rainy’s son. Rainy’s a part of who I am now. In my book, that makes you a part, too.”

  “Like family?”

  “No, not like family. Family.” I drove a little farther while he digested this, then I said, “But in a way, I suppose, it’s the weight of history.”

  His face was blank. It was clear he didn’t understand. Why would he? But I understood. I understood myself better than I had since I’d come to that strange land.

  “Even if you weren’t family, I’d probably be helping,” I said. “You’re one of the good people. I like to think I am, too. Good people help one another. That’s what keeps all the darkness at bay.”

  He shook his head and set his mouth in a hard line. I knew there were demons inside him, whispering. If they were anything like mine, they were probably arguing seductively that trust only led to betrayal.

  “I didn’t see a vehicle of any kind for you up there,” I said. “You always walk?”

  “My Jeep’s parked in Jocko’s hangar. I put it there before he flew me out for the last rendezvous.” His words held a bitter edge, and I knew he was considering the deep betrayal of this man he’d trusted with his life and the lives of so many others.

  “Maybe Rodriguez has some leverage over the old man,” I suggested.

  “Maybe,” he said, but it was clear he felt that justified nothing. “My father was right. Trust no one but family.”

  “Guarantee of a lonely existence.”

  “It seems to have stood my father in good stead,” he said.

  “Your mother would say trust your heart.” When he didn’t respond, I asked, “What does your heart tell you about Jocko?”

  “I’m not sure anymore.” He stared ahead at the restless congregation of storm clouds, at the darkness they were spreading across the land below. “I’m not sure of anything anymore.”

  He was not my son, not in any legal sense, and maybe I had no right to offer advice. But I’d put my life on the line for him, and I’d come to care about him deeply, so I spoke as I might have spoken if he’d been born to me.

  “Do you give up that easily on all your friends?”

  “Jocko.” The word spoke a depth of disappointment. “He’s the last person I’d expect this of.”

  “You don’t know for sure it was him.”

  “It makes perfect sense.”

  “That’s your head talking.” Which was something his mother would have pointed out, had she been there.

  “Look where my heart got me,” he said.

  “Yeah, let’s look at that. You’ve saved a lot of desperate people from being preyed on by the likes of Carlos Rodriguez. You’ve helped them find sanctuary. Maybe you haven’t exactly changed the world, but you’ve changed the lives of those folks, changed them for the better. That’s where your heart has got you. Tell me you regret it.”

  “That’s over now.”

  “Is it? What about Arweiler Bosch?” I said.

  His shoulders had been hunched, but the name made him sit up straight. “Mom told you.”

  “And she showed me the photo you kept pinned to your bedroom wall all those years.”

  “What I do isn’t about Arweiler.”

  “I agree with you there. You’re half Ojibwe. Do you know the Ojibwe word ogichidaa?”

  “Warrior,” he said.

  “That’s one way to translate it. I prefer the more complex interpretation. One who stands between evil and his people. I think in your heart you’re ogichidaa. I think it’s what you were born to be. And whether it’s Arweiler Bosch or Guatemalan refugees or God knows who, there will always be people who need your help. You have a calling, Peter, a duty that you can’t turn away from.”

  We bounced and jolted our way down the mountain for a while, then Peter said, “And you don’t give up on the people you trust.”

  I glanced at him, saw a calm resolve in his dark eyes. “You’re going to be all right, son,” I said.

  We finished our drive out of the mountains in a comfortable silence.

  At the hospital in Sierra Vista, we found that Robert Wieman had checked himself out.

  “DAMA,” the nurse at the desk said.

  “Dama?” I replied.

  “Discharged against medical advice.”

  “But he looked to be on death’s doorstep last night,” I said.

  The nurse shrugged. “Apparently he had a dramatic turnaround. We can’t keep someone here against their will. If he wanted to leave, as long as he signed a release form, we had to let him go.”

  “Who drove him?”

  “
The man who was with him. A Mr. Harris, I believe. His name’s on the form, but I don’t have that.”

  When we were back in the pickup, I said, “Maybe you’ve been hard on the wrong guy. What’s your heart say about Frank Harris?”

  “Frank’s a good man,” Peter replied carefully.

  “But?”

  “He’s often been a troubled man.”

  “How so?”

  “He has this vision of creating a world-class vineyard here, producing wines that will measure up to anything California or the Willamette Valley offers. It’s been a hard road for him. He lost so many vines a couple of years ago, a lot of us thought he was done for. He’s fought back, although it’s taken a toll.” Peter stopped talking, but he hadn’t quite finished. “I’ve had the sense, sometimes,” he finally went on, “that he and Jayne have been at odds. Not that they really fight or anything, just that they struggle. Different goals, maybe. I think Jayne hasn’t been happy out here, and I think that’s been troubling to Frank.”

  “A troubled man, particularly one who’s struggled financially, that might be a decent target for someone looking to corrupt a few morals. I don’t agree with a lot of things your father says, but I do agree that money can buy just about anything.”

  “Or anyone?”

  “Let’s find out. What do you say we head to Jocko’s place?”

  * * *

  We were halfway there when my cell phone rang. It was Frank Harris, desperate.

  “They’ve got Jayne and Jocko.”

  “Who?”

  “Rodriguez,” he said, the name so obviously vile on his lips.

  “Where are you?”

  “Jocko’s place.”

  “We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  He was outside, pacing, and hurried to meet us as we drove up. When we got out and he saw who was with me, relief washed over his face. He hugged Rainy’s son as if Peter were his own son and had come back from the dead. “God, I’m so happy to see you safe.”

  “What happened, Frank?” Peter asked.

  “I was sitting with Jocko at the hospital this morning,” Harris said. “I got a call from someone who said he represented Carlos Rodriguez. He said he wanted to talk to Jocko. In person. I told him to come to the hospital. He said no, bring Jocko to the ranch house. When I told him that wasn’t going to happen, he put Jayne on the phone. She was scared, crying. Then whoever the bastard was, he came back on and said if I didn’t bring Jocko, he’d kill Jayne. And you know Jocko. He was out of that bed in a heartbeat. When we got here, the place was empty. I thought we’d been played. But then cars drove up and men with guns got out. They grabbed Jocko. One of the men, he seemed to be in charge, told me that if I wanted him and Jayne back alive, I’d have to deliver Peter or the location of the place where Peter’s moved the drugs. Drugs? I asked them. What drugs? I didn’t understand any of that. Didn’t matter. They’re going to kill them both if I don’t come through.”