Always Time To Die sk-1

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Other important local news was the big bridge over the Rio Grande gorge outside of town, which saved the locals a long detour and increased tourism greatly. The most recent excitement was years ago, in 1998, the four hundredth birthday party of New Mexico, historic land of many nations.

  Is this why I came back? Dan wondered. To read about how men and women from a rural county had to go halfway around the world to die?

  No matter who lives or dies, nothing really changes.

  Gus hung up and reached for the carton of pastries. "Thanks for the doughnuts. I'm starving. Marti was up all night with the youngest and my cooking is caca. Is Dad's back still bothering him?"

  Dan turned and watched his foster brother take a huge bite out of a bear claw. "I'm starving, too, so save at least one for me. And if it's still bothering him, it didn't show. We hiked six miles yesterday."

  "Yeah? Why?"

  "I felt like it. He felt like coming along."

  "Huh." Gus swallowed the last of one doughnut and reached for another. "Any coffee?"

  "Besides the sewage you keep in that pot?"

  Gus winced. "Yeah."

  "Sorry." Dan saluted with the mug he'd barely sipped from. "This is as good as it gets."

  "I keep thinking if it's bad enough I won't drink as much."

  "Has it worked?"

  Gus eyed the coffeepot warily. "Most of the time. But I didn't get much sleep last night, so…" He shrugged and refilled the stained mug that rarely left his desk. "How's the leg?"

  "Better."

  "That's what you always say."

  "It's always true."

  Gus sipped, grimaced, and hastily ate more pastry. "Considering that your leg wasn't worth much when you got here, I guess you're right." Covertly he looked at his older brother's posture. Erect and relaxed at the same time. Must be some trick they taught in Special Ops, because the regular army sure hadn't made a long-term dent in Gus's habitual slouch.

  "Where'd you hike?" Gus asked.

  "Castillo Ridge."

  "Pretty. In the summer."

  Dan shrugged and ignored the question implicit in his brother's words.

  Gus went back to the sweets. He'd learned in the last few months that when Dan closed a subject, it stayed that way.

  The phone rang.

  Gus picked it up, listened, and automatically glanced through a window into the adjacent room to see if one of the paper's three part-time reporters was warming a chair. "Thanks. Someone will be there in ten minutes." He hung up, hit the intercom, and gave Mano his marching orders. The reporter slammed a hat over his red hair, grabbed his jacket and camera, and hurried out.

  "Bar brawl?" Dan asked idly.

  "Cockfight. The sheriff busted Armando again."

  "Sandoval?"

  "Yeah."

  "I thought he was in the joint for running dope."

  "That's his older brother. His mama assures everyone that Armando is a good boy, goes to mass every day and twice on Sundays, yada yada yada."

  "Is he dirty?" Dan asked.

  "Oh yeah. Never make it stick, though. The hispanos were here a long time before you Yankees, and the border is a joke played by mother nature on Uncle Sam. If the sheriff gets within ten miles of the Sandoval clan's dope operations, bells go off from here to the poppy fields of Mexico." Gus yawned and rubbed his face with one hand. "Every so often they throw the sheriff a bone and get caught with fighting cocks. Big honking deal."

  "Sounds like the same old same old."

  "Nothing changes but the names of the players." Gus grinned suddenly. "I love it."

  Dan hesitated, then asked, "Don't you ever get tired?"

  "Of what?"

  "Crooks being crooks. Cops being cops. A big dumb mutt chasing its own dumb butt."

  "Nope."

  "But you don't print even half of what you know. Doesn't that get to you? Don't you want to grab people and shake them and say, 'Look around you, fool. Everything you think is true is a lie.'"

  Gus's dark eyes widened. "No, I can't say as I do."

  Dan shook his head.

  "Look," Gus said calmly. "There's print news about elections and drunks and governments and traffic lights and cockfights. Then there's what everybody knows about everybody else, the kind of stuff that's better kept out of print. And sometimes there are the kind of secrets that only one or two people know, the kind people kill over. I don't look for those kinds of secrets. Neither does anyone else with half a brain."

  "What do you do when public and private knowledge intersect?"

  "That's when I don't like my job, because that's when people I know are getting hurt."

  Dan shook his head again. "The Sandoval clan is running drugs for one of Mexico's highest elected officials, pimping for underage Mexican prostitutes who may or may not have agreed to their new career, and selling babies as a sideline. The Quintrells have used public office to get rich at the cost of people who are poor or simply unaware-BLM land leases, national forest leases, land swaps with the government to make the family land more valuable, employing illegals, legislative favors for their-"

  "Tell me something I don't know," Gus interrupted. "Hell, tell me something everybody doesn't know. Have you ever heard of a big politician who left office poorer than when he went in?"

  "Why isn't that in your newspaper?"

  "My newspaper? In my dreams. Guess who owns the newspaper now?"

  "The Quintrells?"

  "God, no. That would be too obvious. A good friend of a rich donor who-"

  "Never mind," Dan said over his brother's words. "I can fill in the blanks. Only happy Quintrell news makes print."

  Gus shrugged. "You think it's any different with any other paper anywhere in the world? All papers have an editorial page. Daily news stories that contradict that editorial view don't get published or else they're put way in the back with the personals." He yawned. "Stories that polish the editorial viewpoint get good play above the fold on the front page. Human nature, that's all. No conspiracy or secret handshakes necessary."

  Dan grabbed a doughnut and bit into it like it was an enemy. He knew all about editorials and human nature and the denial of the elephant under the electoral rug.

  "None of this is news to you," Gus said, "so why the snarl?"

  Dan shrugged and chewed. "Sometimes I get a gutful, that's all."

  "You came back from wherever you went with a permanent gutful."

  "There was plenty to eat."

  "And you still don't want to talk about it."

  "Why bother? Nobody wants to know."

  "I do."

  Dan dusted off his hands. "No you don't. Not really. No one does. And I don't blame them. I wish I didn't know." He wiped his hands on his jeans. "So, does Lila have the flu?"

  Gus swallowed the change of subject along with the bitter coffee. "Seems to. It's going through the kids one at a time."

  "The joys of parenthood. Have you and Marti had the bug?"

  "So far so good." He grinned slyly. "Want to come to dinner?"

  "Sure. I'll cook."

  "I was kidding. I don't want you to get sick."

  "I won't. I've been inoculated against stuff you can't even dream of."

  "You sure? I'm afraid Marti's coming down with it. She looked pale this morning."

  "What do you want me to fix?"

  "Garlic chicken," Gus said instantly.

  "When do you want to eat?"

  "Six. If I'm not there-"

  "I'll leave it in the oven on warm," Dan said, "just like Mom used to."

  "You don't have to. Really. I was just kidding."

  The shadow of a smile flickered over Dan's mouth. "I want to. I can't stop or even slow down the train wreck of international politics, but I

  can see that my brother and his family get a warm meal when they're sick."

  Gus didn't know whether to smile or cry. The buzz of his intercom kept him from having to decide. He cleared his throat and held down the button. "Yeah?"
r />   "A Ms. Carolina May to see you."

  "What does she want?"

  "Miss Winifred Simmons y Castillo has hired her to research the Castillo family."

  Chapter 7

  TAOS

  MONDAY MORNING

  CARLY GLANCED AROUND THE CLEAN, WORN RECEPTION AREA OF THE TAOS MORNING Record. Two chairs that looked like they were left over from the Spanish Inquisition sat side by side to the left of the receptionist's desk. An unopened copy of today's newspaper lay on a low coffee table in front of the chairs. Through a glass door on the right she could see a narrow hallway that presumably led to the newsroom and/or the editor's office.

  There was barely enough room to swing a cat. Like the old adobe ranch house, this space had been made for people who were smaller than the norm today.

  "Ms. May?"

  Carly turned from her appraisal of the old building to find a much more modern creation. She took him in with the speed of someone who makes a living out of summarizing people. Mid-thirties, maybe forty. Easily six feet tall, probably more. Good shoulders beneath a turtleneck and leather jacket, long legs in a pair of worn-soft Levi's and scuffed hiking boots, dark hair, the face of a fallen angel, and green eyes that had seen hell. Whatever his history was, it hadn't been written in smiles.

  "Mr. Salvador?" She walked toward him, smiling, her hand extended. "It's good of you to-"

  "I'm Dan Duran," he cut in, shaking her hand briskly and releasing it the same way. "Gus is on the phone. Follow me."

  She noticed a very slight unevenness in the first few steps he took. His left leg was stiff.

  "Are you a reporter?" she asked, catching up and walking alongside him in the narrow hallway.

  "No."

  She waited a few moments, then ignored the man's lack of invitation to chat. "Rancher? Artist? Skier? Cop?"

  "No."

  "Butcher, baker, candlestick maker?"

  He glanced sideways at her. Something close to amusement changed the line of his mouth beneath at least a day's worth of dark stubble. "Nope."

  "Wow, a whole four letters in a single word," Carly said. "Careful. You're going to talk my arm off."

  He glanced at the arm in question, and then at the woman, and wondered how someone with as much life and sass in her as Carolina May had chosen to make a career digging up graves. The thought of her with the gaunt, dour Miss Winifred made him shake his head.

  "What?" Carly asked.

  "Just imagining you with that old curandera."

  "Who?"

  "Miss Winifred. She makes potions and lotions for half of Taos County." She was also reputed to make spells and poisons, but Dan didn't see any need to talk about it with a nosy outsider; his mother was often mentioned in the same breath with Winifred. Locally, both women were curanderas of great respect.

  "I didn't know Winifred was a healer," Carly said.

  "I didn't say she was."

  With that, Dan opened the door to Gus's office and gestured Carly in.

  Frowning, she asked, "What does that mean?"

  He ignored her.

  Gus held up one finger.

  "He'll be done in a minute," Dan said. Then he gestured toward the wall of framed first pages. "Enjoy."

  He turned to leave.

  Carly put her hand on his sleeve. "Wait," she said in a low voice, not wanting to disturb the editor of the Taos newspaper. "Have you known Miss Winifred long?"

  "Yes."

  "Were you raised here?"

  "Yes."

  "I'd like to interview you on the subject of-"

  "No."

  "Don't leave yet," Gus said, pointing at Dan.

  When Dan shrugged and leaned against the wall, Gus spoke quickly into the phone. Then he hung up and stood, holding out his hand across the desk with a warm smile that was meant to balance his brother's chill.

  "Ms. May, I'm Gus Salvador. Don't mind Dan. He lost his sense of humor somewhere in Afghanistan or Africa or Colombia, along with his manners."

  Carly looked from Gus to Dan and back again. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Salvador."

  "Gus."

  She smiled. "Gus. Miss Winifred isn't feeling well today, so she sent me here to search through the morgue for clippings on the Quintrell and Castillo families. Is that all right?"

  "Sure," Gus said.

  "Are they computerized?" she asked.

  Gus laughed. "Do we look computerized?"

  "Urn, microfilm?"

  "It's our standard archive method. Actually, a lot of the info is in searchable computer files, thanks to Dan. He made it a crusade, back when he was thirteen and a real computer geek."

  She glanced warily at the man leaning against the wall. Although he appeared to be relaxed, she sensed he wasn't. What she didn't know was why.

  Maybe he hates women.

  "So, you're an archivist?" she asked Dan.

  "No." He really didn't want to encourage the lithe young woman who was out stomping on everything in sight, looking for land mines.

  "Yes, no, nope," she said. "You're the kind of interview that makes me want to kick something."

  "Me, for instance?" Dan asked against his better judgment.

  "Yeah." Then she smiled, pulled her scarf off her hair, and shook out a loose tumble of red-brown curls. "You spend words like hundred-dollar bills. Good thing you're not a Quintrell."

  Gus started to say something. A look at his brother's face changed his mind.

  "The newspaper archives are always available for research," Gus said after a moment. "Only rule is no smoking and no food or drink."

  "I don't smoke and won't eat or drink in the archives."

  Gus glanced at his watch. "I've got a paper to put together." He looked at Dan. "Take her to the archives and show her what she needs. You know more about it than anyone else."

  Dan started to refuse, but didn't. Beneath his smile and warm manner, Gus was tired, overworked, and worried about his family.

  "Right," Dan said. "You keep the key in the same place?"

  "Lost the key." The phone rang. "Broke the lock." He reached for the phone. "Never fixed it. Yeah?" he said into the phone. "Mano? Did you get the perp walk?"

  Carly waited until they were out in the hall to ask, "What's the-"

  "Perp walk?" Dan cut in.

  She nodded.

  "That's the photo op that comes when the cop slaps cuffs on the presumed bad guy and marches him in front of the media," Dan said.

  Carly digested that while they walked down the hallway, away from the reception area. The back of the building opened out onto a small, deserted, and neglected courtyard. Maybe in summer it served as a retreat for workers in the surrounding buildings, but right now it looked as inviting as a meat locker.

  "Perp walk," she said. "Got it. Who was it?"

  "Armando Sandoval, cockfighter and drug smuggler."

  "Drugs? He'll be going away for a long time."

  Dan shook his head. "He was busted for the cocks. He'll pay a fine and be home for dinner."

  She closed her eyes against the wind lifting grit and snow from the courtyard. Her ankles and fingers stung from the cold. She yanked her scarf over her head and held it in place. "Does this happen all the time?"

  "The wind?"

  "No. The perp walk and the arrest and the fine."

  Dan shrugged. "As often as it has to."

  "What does that mean?"

  "You ask a lot of questions."

  "I need a lot of answers," she said. "It's what I do. Like a reporter, except that a lot of my subjects aren't alive to speak for themselves."

  "So you suck up hearsay, rumor, gossip, and innuendo."

  "You can go back to one-word answers anytime."

  "Okay."

  He grabbed the handle on a door that sat crookedly in its frame and gave it a yank. Frozen wood scraped over icy stone. She stepped past him quickly, eager to be out of the wind.

  "Wait."

  She stopped when she felt the strength of his fingers gripp
ing her arm. "What?" she said.

  "Bad footing."

  Instead of the uneven wooden floor nearly all the old, single-story buildings had, this doorway opened abruptly onto a rickety cellar door set right in the floor. A tarp covered the door to keep in the heat of the room below. Dan flipped the tarp aside and turned on a switch.

  Carly's eyes widened as she looked at the ancient door. The holes between the slats were big enough for her to step right through. Dan might not be the most outgoing man she'd ever met, but he'd kept her from a nasty fall.

  "Used to be the town icehouse," he said, opening the cellar door. "During Prohibition it was the local speakeasy. Now it's the archive for the paper. They cut another entrance to the first floor around the corner, but this way is easier to get to the basement."

  She looked up at him with hazel eyes that flashed gold in the unshielded overhead light. "Thank you."

  His left eyebrow raised in silent question.

  "For not letting me fall," she explained, waving at the unprotected gap in the floor. "I know you don't want me here."

  He looked at the gold and smoke of her eyes, her lips full and slightly parted, and the shiny, lively curls falling over her cold-flushed cheeks. She was too intelligent, too attractive, too innocent, and way too alive. He didn't want to see her hurt as part of the collateral damage of asking questions that shouldn't be asked and finding answers that weren't worth the cost of getting them. He was an expert on those kinds of answers.

  "You're right," Dan said, releasing her. "I don't want you here. But we don't always get what we want, do we? I'll go first."

  "Why? Are there rats or snakes?" she asked jokingly.

  "Snakes? Not in the winter. I go first so that if you trip, I can catch you before you break your nosy neck. Watch the fifth step. It's cracked."

  Nosy neck? She would have smiled but she knew he hadn't been joking. She wondered if it was all outsiders he resented, or just women.

  If there had ever been a handrail, it hadn't survived into the twenty-first century. Nor did the flooring right around the opening look very trustworthy.