Kerney had finessed Posada into connecting him with DeLeon by posing as a rogue ex-cop trying to smuggle valuable merchandise across the border. He had hooked Posada with some up-front money and the promise of a percentage from the proceeds.
“Barely. His niece now lives with him. She will inherit his estate. A private nurse cares for him. I don’t think it would be wise for you to try to see him.”
“I learned that firsthand a while back,” Kerney said. “Does Juan Diaz still work for him?”
“The houseboy? No. He moved out and is now brokering for the contrabandistas in El Paso. He specializes in the low-end trade to avoid any conflicts with the drug jefes. He arranges buyers for smuggled cigarettes, liquor, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
“He rents a cottage in a development near the Casa Grande Highway. He should be easy to find.”
“Gracias,” Kerney said as he slid five one-hundred-dollar bills into Rose’s hand.
“What’s this?” she demanded warily.
“It’s confiscated drug money taken from a Mexican smuggler,” Kerney answered. “I read your article on homeless refugees. Use the money to help some of them.”
Rose’s hand closed over the bills. “Are you a policeman with a sense of poetic justice, Señor Kerney?”
“A character flaw, no doubt,” Kerney replied.
“No doubt,” Rose echoed, as she picked up the laptop computer case. “Move quickly, Señor Kerney. I have a telephone call I must make.”
“Will you say that you told me how to find Juan?”
“I believe that would be in my best interest.”
• • •
“It is good to see you again, Señor Kerney,” Juan said. “I owe you a great deal.” He sat behind an expensive tubular-steel-and-glass desk, which held a computer and a laser printer. The rest of the home office furnishings consisted of a chair and love seat with plush cushions and bolsters, some sleek brushed-metal floor lamps, and a large Guatemalan folk art weaving on one wall.
Kerney sat in the chair across from the desk. “You owe me nothing, Juan,” he said.
Juan’s cottage was in a middle-class subdivision outside the Juárez city limits. The area had an Americanized look to it with neatly tended houses on small lots.
Juan no longer dressed like a domestic houseboy: His white linen costume had been replaced by a button-down broadcloth shirt and a pair of twill slacks. The change in attire was a striking contrast that heightened Juan’s full-blooded Indian features. His long, thick black hair was pulled tight against his temples and tied with a band so that it draped down the back of his neck.
“But you’re doing well, I take it,” Kerney added.
“Very well. And I have you to thank, in part, señor. The customs agent you put me in touch with was able to get me a green card. I now have an apartment in El Paso and, in return for information I pass along now and then, I cross freely over the border. It has made doing business much less complicated.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“How can I help you, señor?”
“I need to locate Enrique DeLeon. I want to know exactly where he is.”
Even before Kerney had finished speaking, Juan shook his head. “As much as I would like to, I cannot help you. DeLeon is out of the country. He travels often and does not announce his itinerary.”
“Does he fly out of Juárez?”
“No. El Paso. It is much less suspicious to the norteamericanos for him to do so.”
“I understand he owns houses in many countries. Can you get me exact locations?”
“Your friend at Customs asked for the same information, and as much as I tried, I was unable to supply it. It is my belief that whatever property DeLeon owns outside of Mexico is not in his name.”
“You have no sources of information that you can tap into?” Kerney prodded. “There must be some information on his whereabouts floating around.”
“Do you wish to have us killed, señor? DeLeon has bought more than diplomatic immunity from our government with his riches. He now has former federal intelligence agents on his payroll. Simply asking questions could make us both targets for assassination. And if the former rurales didn’t murder us, either DeLeon’s gangsters, the Juárez policía, or one of your corrupt Drug Enforcement Agency operatives surely would.”
“That’s not what I want to hear.”
Juan raised his hands in an expression of helplessness.
Frustrated, Kerney changed the subject. “There may be a shipment of stolen art moving into Mexico sometime soon.” Kerney handed Juan the inventory. “DeLeon is behind the theft. Will you keep your eyes and ears open?”
“That, I will gladly do,” Juan replied.
Kerney extracted an envelope and laid out three thousand dollars.
Juan’s long, dark eyelashes fluttered. “You pay me more than my normal fee,” he said, “and I have given you very little in return.”
“Use what you need to buy information, and consider the balance a retainer.”
“As you wish, señor.”
“You may be questioned about my visit.”
“Do you have a cover story you wish me to use?”
“Tell them about the art theft, but try not to disclose that I’m looking for DeLeon.”
“I will do my best to maintain the confidentiality of our conversation.”
• • •
The road to the Rancho Caballo clubhouse where the O’Keeffe Museum fund-raiser had been held was barred by electronic security gates. Gilbert Martinez pulled to a stop next to the guard station. A young Hispanic male wearing a green sweater and khaki pants popped out of the small building, flashed Gilbert a big smile, and informed him that he needed a visitor’s pass to get in.
Gilbert flashed his shield in response. After a few minutes of bickering with the kid over whether or not he had the right to proceed with police business on private property, Gilbert got testy. He made clear the implications of interfering with an officer in the performance of his duties, and the guard grudgingly opened the gate.
Gilbert drove a mile down a paved private road to the clubhouse and coasted to a stop, his mind disbelieving what he saw. The clubhouse had a two-story central core with single-story wings that stretched out on either side. At the front of the building, stone walkways wandered through landscaped rock gardens to a wrought-iron bridge that spanned a man-made pond. A flagstone driveway led to a portal reserved for valet parking.
Behind the clubhouse, the lush green of a fairway flowed up to piñon-studded hills. With a Spanish-tile pitched roof, the place had the feel of a Palm Springs resort. It was uncommonly glitzy looking, and the fact that Santa Fe had become just another trendy resort destination for the wealthy depressed Gilbert.
The sprinklers were on, pumping fine streams of water in arches over the golf course, and the grass glistened in the soft light from a hazy sun. As he parked and walked toward the entrance, Gilbert wondered what bureaucratic idiot had approved such a waste of water. Arid New Mexico survived on groundwater and snowpack runoff; it was not a commodity to be wasted on a rich man’s playground.
Before he reached the entrance, the door opened and a stylish woman in her late forties stepped out to meet him. Her blond hair was carefully curled and tinted. She wore a long Santa Fe–style dress that accentuated her trim figure and a pair of snakeskin cowboy boots. She held a cellular telephone in her hand.
“I’m afraid we’re closed today,” she said, before Gilbert could introduce himself.
“I need to speak to the concierge,” he replied.
“I’m the concierge,” the woman replied with a casual glance at Gilbert’s badge and ID. “I can’t talk to you right now. I’m very busy.”
“I’d like to ask you about the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum benefit event held here last month.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Who attended the function?”
&
nbsp; “I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”
“Don’t you keep a guest list?”
“Of course we do. But this is a private club. We don’t release any information without the permission of the board of directors.”
“Your cooperation would be helpful,” Gilbert replied. “Could you bend the rules this time?”
“Certainly not,” the woman said. “If you want access to any information, you’ll have to talk to our legal counsel. If your request is approved, I’ll be glad to cooperate with you.”
“And who is that?”
“Cobb, Owens, and Mackintosh.”
“Is there anyone else besides your lawyers who might be able to help me?”
“The staff at the Museum of New Mexico Foundation co-sponsored the event and sent out invitations to their members. You might want to talk to them.”
“Would they have a complete list of all the guests?”
“Only the museum foundation members, I would imagine,” the woman said. “A blanket invitation went out to all Rancho Caballo residents through our monthly newsletter.”
“I’m particularly interested in talking to a gentleman with a Hispanic surname. Supposedly, he owns a home here. He may be Spanish or Mexican.” Gilbert consulted his notebook and read off the description Frank Bailey had provided him. “Do you know anyone like that?”
“As I said before, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
Gilbert got the concierge’s name, thanked her, and walked back to his car. Nothing about this case seemed to come easy. He checked the time. First, he would try the two women Roger Springer had admitted taking on late-night tours of the Roundhouse. He had been unable to reach either of them yesterday. After that, he would stop at the county assessor’s office and get a listing of who owned lots and homes in Rancho Caballo. He doubted that too many Hispanic surnames would pop up on the tax records for the subdivision.
• • •
Gilbert’s interviews with the women confirmed Roger Springer’s account of impromptu, innocent after-hours tours of the governor’s suite. But Gilbert came away with the sense that he’d heard a canned, rehearsed story from each woman. Neither had struck him as the type who would be thrilled by the opportunity to have just a private tour of the Roundhouse. He couldn’t help but harbor the suspicion that Springer and the women might have had a completely different agenda for the late-night visits—like having sex on the floor in the governor’s private office.
It wasn’t all that kinky. Once, when investigating a report of fraud at a state agency, Gilbert had walked in on a manager who had forgotten to lock his office door while he was performing oral sex on his girlfriend.
He walked down the long wide hallway of the old county courthouse, a lovely WPA building two blocks from the plaza. The hand-carved beams, finely crafted corbels, delicate tin light fixtures, and the sweeping staircases had been retained, but the guts of the building had been ripped out and modernized after the district court and sheriff’s department had moved to other locations.
As a child, Gilbert had occasionally accompanied his father to the courthouse when it still housed all the county services. Back then, his father knew most of the people who worked there on a first-name basis. Gilbert knew none of the workers he passed in the hallway, and it only deepened his feeling that he was a stranger in his hometown.
Maybe it had been a mistake to take the promotion to sergeant and move back to Santa Fe. So far, it had been nothing but a painful, disconnected experience.
He found the assessor’s office and asked for the Rancho Caballo subdivision property tax records. The printout he got wasn’t helpful at all. No Hispanic-surnamed owners were listed, but a sizable number of the houses were owned by out-of-state corporations and foreign companies.
He compared the records with the names Fletcher Hartley and Frank Bailey had given him. None were listed as Rancho Caballo owners. But one local business, Kokopelli Design Studio, was carried on the books as a corporate owner of two homes.
Gilbert noted the address for the studio. It was one block off the plaza.
On his way out of the building, he stopped at the land-use planning office and asked to speak to the director. Gilbert had one question to ask, of purely personal interest.
• • •
“How much water does the Rancho Caballo golf course use?” Gilbert asked, after introducing himself to the head of the planning office.
The director, a nearly bald, gray-faced older man, scowled at the question. “On the average, between three hundred thousand and four hundred thousand gallons a day.”
“How did that kind of consumption get approved?”
“Rancho Caballo was initially approved to use only recycled gray water for the golf course,” the man answered. “That was part of the original subdivision master plan.”
“That’s impossible,” Gilbert said. “There isn’t enough development in the area to supply that volume of gray water.”
“Rancho Caballo bought additional water rights from an adjoining landowner last year. They can legally pump hundreds of acre-feet of groundwater from now until the wells run dry.”
“Who sold the rights?”
The man chuckled sourly. “You don’t follow local politics much, I take it. Sherman Cobb sold the water rights to the corporation. He owns a couple of sections of land that butt up against the subdivision. It caused quite a stink in the press, and the environmentalists raised hell about the depletion of the underground aquifer. But it got approved anyway.”
“I see,” Gilbert replied, thinking maybe not much had changed in the 150 years since the end of the Mexican-American War, when the Stars and Stripes were first raised over Santa Fe.
• • •
At the museum foundation offices, just behind the fine arts museum, Gilbert was directed by a receptionist to the publicist’s office on the second floor. He climbed the stairs and found Fletcher Hartley sitting at a cluttered table in a small staff lounge near the stairwell, poring over photographs.
“What are you doing here?” Gilbert asked.
Fletcher waved off the implied censure. “I’m doing research. The publicity director is an old friend. She was more than willing to share the guest list for the O’Keeffe benefit, as well as photographs she took at the gala.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be calling art dealers?”
“I’ve done that, to no avail. Now I’m gazing at candid snapshots of smug art patrons. Care to join me? From the look of it, there are untold numbers of potential suspects. So far, I have ten shots taken of Amanda Talley with distinctly different groups of people. She appears to be quite the social butterfly.”
“Hand me a stack,” Gilbert said as he sat down at the table.
They sorted through the pictures and assembled two piles of photos. One accumulation featured Amanda Talley in every shot, while a larger stack included everyone else who had been photographed at the gathering.
With the help of the publicist, they whittled down the number of unidentified people in the photographs to slightly under twenty.
“What’s next?” Fletcher asked.
“Do you know who owns a company called Kokopelli Design Studio?” Gilbert asked. He stretched to ease the stiffness in his shoulders, and started stuffing the two sets of pictures into envelopes.
“Bucky Watson owns it. Buckley is his given name. He’s unscrupulous. Once he made me an absurd offer to buy my inventory of completed works. I threw him out of my studio.”
Gilbert picked through the Amanda Talley photographs until he found one with Watson, Roger Springer, and Frank Bailey standing in front of the clubhouse bar with two unidentified men. He studied the picture.
“Watson’s design studio owns two houses in Rancho Caballo,” Gilbert said. “Both in the million-dollar range.”
“My, my, Bucky’s doing quite well for himself.”
“Can a design studio generate that kind of cash flow?”
“Bucky is really a small con
glomerate. He owns the design studio, a gallery on Canyon Road, and an art-crating company. And he also dabbles quite a bit in commercial real estate.”
“So, he’s got big bucks. I get the feeling you don’t like him,” Gilbert said.
“I do not,” Fletcher replied, as he reached for his topcoat. “Besides being greedy, he has no aesthetic sense and a shallow charm that wears thin.”
“Why do people like Watson come here?” Gilbert asked.
“I see we share the same resentments about the new pioneers,” Fletcher noted. “While Santa Fe still has appeal, it is not the place we once loved.”
Outside, in the lateness of the day, Gilbert said good-bye to Fletcher, who waved his umbrella in response, and jaywalked to the plaza.
Gilbert smiled as he watched. He remembered the image of Fletcher sitting in the deep shade under the portal of his house on summer evenings, sipping his single malt scotch, and entertaining the endless stream of friends who dropped by.
Gilbert’s family had a standing invitation to Fletcher’s informal soirees, and the gatherings sparkled with eccentrics, bohemians, artists, writers, and the intelligentsia. Fletcher’s friends were men and women of every imaginable persuasion and inclination who loved the city with a passion that made them a vital part of the community.
For Gilbert, going to Fletcher’s house had been like opening a window on the world. He smiled at the memory of Fletcher and his pals leading everybody off on a walk to the plaza for band concerts and other festivities. Those were magical evenings when Gilbert was young.
What did Fletcher call the people who had recently migrated to Santa Fe? New pioneers—that was it. The city was glutted with affluent colonists busy discarding identities, leaving relationships, abandoning careers, forging new lifestyles, pursuing New Age aspirations, and picking through the Santa Fe scene like shoppers at an outlet mall. There were probably more psychic healers, spirit guides, psychotherapists, and self-help gurus per square foot in Santa Fe than anywhere else in the country.
Stolen art and stolen culture, Gilbert thought. He pushed back the sour feeling. It was close to the end of the business day. Maybe Bucky Watson would still be at his design studio on Water Street.
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