Dark Reservations

by John Fortunato

  He couldn’t wait.

  But for now, he’d have to satisfy himself by telling someone else. He took out his cell phone.

  “Chief, this is Officer Bluehorse. We just finished.” He told the chief about Joe’s inspection of the Lincoln, grinning the entire time. “He said I could assist with the investigation, if that’s okay with you, sir.”

  His good mood soured slightly. “I’m not sure what his plans are, sir. He’s going to call me tomorrow.”

  After he disconnected, he stood there for a bit, not moving, still flying high, but beginning to see the ground. Joe had given him a chance; he wouldn’t let him down.

  He punched in his grandmother’s number.

  “Shi másání,” he said. “I’m in Chi Chil Tah and was thinking of Shi chei.”

  They talked a little about family and about why he hadn’t been out to see her the past couple weeks. He didn’t mention the case to her, though. She didn’t follow the news, and it would have taken too long to explain its importance. But he did have a reason for calling.

  “Shí másání, do you still have any of Shi chei’s oak kachinas?”

  SEPTEMBER 24

  FRIDAY, 2:18 P.M.

  EDGERTON FOR GOVERNOR HEADQUARTERS, SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO

  For the past month, the two dozen volunteers who staffed Grace Edgerton’s campaign headquarters buzzed with the excitement of an impending win. The polls predicted it. Her staff echoed it. In four weeks’ time, Grace Edgerton would be elected governor of the great state of New Mexico. And she was ready. Ready to lead New Mexico to a prosperous future that would embrace the multiethnic population and leverage the state’s technological centers, the backbone of its economy. She would also protect the border, not to keep Mexicans from following their dream and coming to the United States, but to stop the flow of drugs and violence. Those were her campaign pledges. And any one of her volunteers there in the office would swear she planned to do just that. She loved New Mexico. To her, it was the Land of Enchantment.

  But yesterday, things had changed. Brooding silence descended upon her headquarters. Volunteers spoke in hushed whispers as they stole furtive glances toward Grace Edgerton’s office and the battalion of senior staff dashing in and out. The change began right after Channel 13 reported her husband’s vehicle had been found.

  In less than a month, voters would go to the polls and decide which lever to pull—or rather, which button to push. Her volunteers started talking about defeat. That morning, two had called in and said they could no longer volunteer because they had found jobs.

  Now, Congresswoman Grace Edgerton rocked back and forth in her tufted high-backed burgundy office chair. That morning’s edition of the Albuquerque Journal lay on her desk. The photograph above the fold showed a smiling Arlen and Grace Edgerton, their hands joined and raised in a victory pose. Arlen’s first election, in 1986.

  Gabriella Soyria Cullodena Sedillo-Edgerton began to cry.

  Cullodena was her grandmother’s first name on her mother’s side, the Gilchrist side. A proud Scottish family. Her father, Gustavo Alejandro Sedillo, came from a wealthy Mexican family. Both sides opposed her parents’ union. But when Grace was born, their families put aside their ethnic differences and doted on their pequeño joya, their little jewel.

  Grace’s parents lived in Matamoros, a city on the U.S.-Mexico border, across from Brownsville, Texas. But a few months before Grace was due, her mother moved to Brownsville and delivered her first baby at Mercy Hospital, or La Merced, as the locals called it, ensuring Grace’s birthright citizenship. Grace grew up attending the best private schools in America. Later she attended the University of New Mexico, which wasn’t the best, but it did have the largest Hispanic population in the country and was close enough for Gustavo Sedillo to check up on his only daughter. At age twenty-two, she met an older man, Arlen Edgerton, a transplanted blue blood from Massachusetts, who became a campus activist and her college lover. At age twenty-six, she was the wife of Congressman Arlen Edgerton, the beloved New Mexican, the celebrated liberal, and her political role model. At age thirty, she was Congresswoman Grace Edgerton. And now, at an age that she tried her best never to divulge, she would be Governor Grace Edgerton.

  Her office door flung open. She wiped away a tear.

  “We’ve got trouble.” Christopher Staples, her campaign manager, strode into the office, an invisible cloud of cheap aftershave in tow. He plopped his two-doughnut-a-day bottom onto the burgundy leather couch she kept in there for those long nights during the campaign. “Big trouble. Godzilla sequel–size trouble. King fucking Kong–size trouble. This is the shit you can’t foresee. The shit that can torpedo a run at the last minute.”

  Her chest fluttered. “What is it?”

  “This could sink us. Sink you.”

  “Chris, calm down and tell me.”

  “So close. So freakin’ close.”

  “Chris!”

  “Arlen’s vehicle was riddled with bullets.”

  “Oh God.”

  “See what I mean. A shitstorm is about to hit and stink up your campaign.”

  “Oh God.”

  “You can say that again.”

  She whispered, “Arlen.”

  Chris stared at her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, but his tone didn’t agree. “I shouldn’t have dropped it on you like that. But we need to move.”

  Grace took a deep breath and wiped away another tear.

  “Why?”

  “Kendall called. There’s a Washington Post reporter already sniffing around, working the angle that you knew about the affair and maybe you put a hit out on your husband and that tramp.”

  “Her name was Faye and she wasn’t a tramp and they weren’t lovers. I shouldn’t have to be telling you this. You’re supposed to be on my side.” She looked down at the paper on her desk. At the picture of her and Arlen holding hands. “Those rumors are old. No one cares about them now.”

  “This is the Washington fucking Post. You know, the Watergate folks. They put the FBI to shame.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Damn it, Grace. Take your blinders off. Arlen’s disappearance never amounted to much back then because no one had any answers. No one knew what happened. Anything goes now. They could find the gun in your desk drawer, for all I know.”

  She sprang to her feet. “What the hell do you mean by that?”

  “Kendall’s concerned, and I don’t blame him. If he endorses you now, there can be blowback later. He wants you in office so you can return the favor when he announces his run for the White House. But you go up in flames with this, he gets burned.” He leaned his head back, pressing the palms of his hands against his eyes. “Shit. You may have been considered for the VP ticket. I so wanted out of this state. You know, I was even checking out condos in D.C.”

  “Knock it off. I’ll talk to him.”

  He dropped his hands and met her gaze. His expression suggested he was witnessing humanity’s fall from grace. “Look, I’m neither your priest nor your lawyer. I was hired to get you elected. If you had anything to do with it, I don’t care. But if you, by some wild chance now, do get elected and the feds come knocking at the governor’s mansion someday, perhaps it would be in your best interest to start planting a few seeds of marital discord. It might help you later. I get paid either way; just give me the word.”

  “Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I love—loved—Arlen, and I want to know what happened to him, just like everyone else. And if you don’t believe me, then maybe you need to consider joining Percy’s camp.”

  “Don’t think I haven’t.” Chris struggled to his feet. “And remember what I said. Marital problems make you sympathetic.”

  SEPTEMBER 24

  FRIDAY, 2:59 P.M.

  BANK OF ALBUQUERQUE TOWER, ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO

  Joe parked in a no parking zone. He tossed his placard on the dash. The laminated card read FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY—FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT VEHICLE. He hurried into the buil
ding.

  Inside, he scanned the tenant directory posted on the wall.

  THE HAMILTON GROUP … 17th Floor.

  He checked the time. He was late.

  SEPTEMBER 24

  FRIDAY, 4:37 P.M.

  MICKEY’S BAR & GRILL, ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO

  On the drive over, Joe had received a call from Bluehorse. The Gallup newspaper had printed a story about Edgerton’s vehicle being found bullet-riddled.

  With his finger, Joe wrote the words shit happens in the condensation on his mug of beer. He appraised his work. Andy Warhol had nothing on him. Pop art at its finest.

  “Wanna talk about it?” Mickey Sheehan said as he sorted through the quarters in the bar’s register, forever on the lookout for rare coins.

  “Not right now. I’m finding my muse.”

  “Ask her if she’s got a sister.”

  “You need a bingo partner?”

  “One of my waitresses quit.”

  Mickey started on the nickels. Joe watched. Back in August, Joe had been sitting on the same stool when Mickey yelled, “I’ll be damned. No P.” He repeated that a few times, slapping the mahogany bar top and laughing. He later told Joe that all the dimes minted in Philadelphia after 1980 had a P, designating the city. In 1982, the mint accidentally omitted the P from a small batch. Mickey’s dime would fetch a couple thousand dollars, though he’d never sell it. “I got a spot for it right next to my 1955 doubled-die penny.” Joe had no idea what a 1955 doubled-die penny was, but he appreciated Mickey’s enthusiasm, especially when he gave the bar a round of drinks on the house.

  Mickey finished his coin hunt and limped to the other end of the counter to check on the only other customers at the bar, two men in suits and ties who huddled together and talked in whispers, as though they were discussing trade secrets. Maybe they were.

  Mickey’s Bar & Grill had the feel of an old-time saloon. The walls were of wood panel and exposed brick, and the thick oak tables and chairs were covered with liberally applied coats of varnish. The place smelled of smoked ribs and frothy ale. War photographs decorated the walls. Mickey had served in Vietnam with the Screaming Eagles. He once told Joe how he’d earned his Purple Heart. “During the war—and don’t believe that conflict bullshit; it was a goddamn war—I was at Firebase Ripcord when the shit hit the fan. We was getting pounded by mortars. I jump in a foxhole and feel a sting on my right calf. I reach down to rub it, thinking I got nicked by a flying stone or something, and the son of a bitch is gone.” He looked Joe in the eye. “Now my foot powder lasts twice as long.” He’d winked then, but Joe had been too involved in the story to laugh or smile, or whatever the old war vet had expected.

  Joe liked Mickey and he liked the bar. It relaxed him. He sipped his beer and enjoyed the relative quiet of pre–happy hour. Mickey would turn the music on around 4:30, sometimes Tony Bennett, sometimes something more current. And then the after-work regulars would start to trickle in, most sitting at the bar, a few grabbing tables for dinner. Joe knew the routine of the regulars. He’d become a member two years ago, ever since Christine’s …

  He downed the mug and set it at the end of the counter, indicating to Mickey he wanted—no, needed—another. Mickey hobbled over, took out a fresh mug from under the counter, and filled it.

  “Ready to talk?”

  “Yeah. Just needed to get one down.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Had a job interview today. I was late and it didn’t go too well. The guy was younger than my daughter.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You got a good reputation and you know your shit. It’ll work out. But next time, don’t forget to shave.”

  Joe stroked his face. Shit. Actually, he’d hadn’t forgotten. He just hadn’t bothered. Shaving was one of those things that didn’t seem so important anymore.

  Mickey went on: “How’s Melissa?”

  “Top of her class, as always. Just like her mom.” He took a swallow of beer, a long swallow. “Nothing like her dad. At least I can be thankful for that.”

  “Snap out of it, Joe.” Mickey’s voice was serious. “I don’t mind your business. Hell, I appreciate it. But you got more going for you than coming in here and drinking by yourself every night. You’re still young—younger than me, anyway. Get out and meet people. Meet some women.”

  “You’re a broken record, Mick.”

  “See what I mean. You’re outta touch. They ain’t got records no more. You gotta say, ‘Mick, you sound like a skipping CD.’”

  Joe smiled. “I don’t think anyone says that.”

  “They should. ‘Broken record’ sounds old-fashioned.”

  Joe wrote skipping CD in the condensation on his mug, wrapping the letters all the way around so they started and stopped at the handle. No, it didn’t have the same ring as “broken record.”

  “We may have a prospect,” Mickey said.

  Three women walked toward the bar. They didn’t look over. Joe knew two of them, Linda and Sue. Two very nice, and very loud, married women who came to Mickey’s a couple times a week to grab a drink and do battle with the bar’s sound system. They worked for a large development company down the street. Joe liked them because they were fun to listen to. He didn’t know the third woman, a blonde. She walked between the other two, laughing a nice laugh, a friendly laugh. Joe immediately liked her. She filled out her beige pants like roses fill out a bouquet—and she wore sensible heels. If she had been wearing high heels, he’d have pegged her as high-maintenance. Christine, his wife, had never worn stilettos, but she’d always had great legs and never needed the extra sculpting.

  Joe returned to his beer. This time he wrote stilletto in the condensation, not sure how to spell it. He tried to remember if he’d ever written the word before. He didn’t think so. He couldn’t remember writing high heels, either.

  Joe took another long swallow of beer. He was about to draw a high heel, when a woman spoke behind him.

  “It’s only one l.”

  Joe turned and saw the blonde standing next to him. She offered a smile. He turned on his charm.

  “Huh?”

  She pointed to his mug. “Stiletto has one l. Why did you write that on your mug?”

  Joe had an answer, but not one that made sense. Oh, hi. I noticed you weren’t wearing stilettos, so I knew you weren’t high-maintenance. Why, no, I’m not crazy. Why do you ask? Instead, he lied. “Reliving my fifth-grade spelling bee. I got it wrong then, too.”

  “You’d think you would have come to terms with that by now.”

  “Some losses are harder to get over than others.”

  “I’m sure.” Their eyes locked for a moment. “I came over to thank you for the drink.”

  Joe searched out Mickey. The old bastard winked.

  “Welcome to the neighborhood,” Joe said. “Linda and Sue are a lot of fun.” Lame.

  “They are.” She leaned in and whispered, “But they’re so loud.”

  “Loud? I never noticed.”

  She laughed and held out her hand. “I’m Gillian.”

  “Joe. Nice to meet you.”

  “Would you like to join us?”

  “No, I wouldn’t be great company tonight. And besides, I have a failed geometry test from ninth grade I have to revisit. Still can’t figure how I botched that one.” He drew a triangle on his glass.

  “You’re funny.” She turned and went back to her friends. Linda and Sue both looked over and waved. “Hi, Joe,” they shouted almost in unison, but not quite. He waved back and placed his half-empty mug on the end of the counter. Mickey came over.

  “She thanked me for the drink,” Joe said.

  “You’re a real sweetheart.”

  “Yeah, I surprise myself sometimes.”

  “Another?”

  “One more. I don’t want to ruin my nice-guy impression by staggering out of here.”

  “Too late. Linda and Sue already know you. But I’ll see what I can do with the new girl.”

&nb
sp; SEPTEMBER 24

  FRIDAY, 7:23 P.M.

  LOS DANZANTES, CIUDAD DE MÉXICO, DISTRITO FEDERAL, MEXICO

  Cedro Bartolome swirled his glass of Chianti. He examined its legs, sniffed, and then took a sip. Plums and Mother Earth.

  “Excelente,” he said.

  The waiter poured wine for the other three guests.

  Tonight was special. For the last three weeks, he’d been courting a new client for the firm, a conglomerate with sizable holdings in both Mexico and the United States. A few hours earlier, the conglomerate’s in-house counsel had notified him it had selected his firm, so he had called his wife, Daniela, and told her they would go out tonight to celebrate. Then he invited Ernesto and his wife. Ernesto was one of Cedro’s five partners at the firm, and he rarely refused an opportunity to enjoy good food and spirits.

  “Have you been following the news in America about Edgerton?” Ernesto asked in Spanish.

  Almost two decades had passed since Cedro had last heard the name.

  “It’s not good,” Ernesto said. “The authorities found his car. They could start asking you questions again, maybe put some pressure on the firm. We should be ready.”

  Cedro sipped his wine. He detected the pedestrian flavor of sour berries.

  SEPTEMBER 25

  SATURDAY, 9:11 A.M.

  JONES RANCH ROAD, CHI CHIL TAH (NAVAJO NATION), NEW MEXICO

  It took Joe a few minutes to find Bluehorse’s trail, two tire tracks turning north off Jones Ranch Road. He got out and stuck a small orange flag into the clay by the path. Then he climbed back in his vehicle and drove into the tree line.

  The way was rough. He switched to four-wheel drive. As he weaved around trees, he glanced occasionally in his rearview mirror, catching the brilliant rays of sunlight that penetrated the thin canopy and gave the clouds of dust behind him a surreal glow, as though he were passing through a magical gateway, a rift through worlds. Perhaps he was. Many have described the Navajo Nation as a mystical place, a place where superstition and the substantive world fuse into a new reality.