The Wolf Path

by Judith Van GIeson

  “But when an animal gets in your way you shoot it with no questions asked.”

  “A predator is a predator, but Mexicans are just people trying to make a living. Perla and I are Christians,” he said.

  16

  EITHER DON AND Perla were what they were pretending to be—good Christian ranchers besieged by environmentalists, the weather, the federal government, predators, Mexico and just about everything else—or they weren’t. Either he believed unknown smugglers shot Bob Bartel, or he wanted me to think he did. They were in the right location if they wanted to be involved in illegal activities: wildlife poaching, parrot smuggling, bull semen smuggling, human smuggling, drug smuggling. With a lot of temptingly remote acres fronting on the border it could be any, all or none of the above. Don was fluent in the smugglers’ language, too. Just how far had he gone to get along with them, anyway? The fact that Don didn’t want the federal government on his property might mean something, might not. Nobody wants the federal government around, even those who benefit the most from it.

  Don had come up with a tidy solution that could end the investigation: illegal aliens, narcotraficantes, contrabandistas, pericobandistas, one of them thought Bartel was la migra, shot him, drove the truck away under the cover of night, left no evidence but a campfire and a water bottle and was never seen again. It wouldn’t give Soledad the satisfaction of seeing Juan Sololobo in jail but at least they’d be rid of him. He’d be leaving town with Siri the minute he could anyway. The Mexican smuggler theory would clear Buddy Ohles, Soledad’s own, and the Phillipses of any suspicion. As for the feds, it was another border murder of one peripherally their own. If it was clean, how much investigation would they bother to do? And Sheriff Ohweiler? I wondered. Would he buy it? But most of all, what about me? A closed case would send me back to Albuquerque and keep me there. It would get my client off the hook at no one else’s expense (the chances of catching a criminal with the smuggler’s profile were poor), but was it the truth? It wasn’t my job to find out. My job was to represent my client, and these so-called smuggler/murderers were the best thing that could have happened to him. I should forget about the calves with no identifiable cause of death disappearing or getting moved around. Forget that my client had taken a woman’s drug, woken up and made love near the time the crime was completed. Not ask whether Norm Alexander quit or retired. Assume the radio signal that Bartel had picked up was a bird, not a radio-collared mountain lion or anything else. Leave it in the capable hands of Don and Perla Phillips and the not so capable hands of Sheriff Ohweiler. Go home and forget.

  I stopped at the Galaxy Deli on my way. Ernesto sat in his usual stationary position, chin in hands, ears attuned to every vibration.

  “Buenas tardes, Ernesto,” I said.

  “Es la Señorita Hamel, la mujer de las Papaya Punches?”

  “Sí.”

  “Buenas tardes.”

  I went to the cooler, picked out a Papaya Punch, took it to the counter and counted out my fifty cents. “Heard any more wolves?” I asked.

  “Someone else was asking me that very same question,” Ernesto said.

  “Who was that?”

  “Bob Bartel.”

  “When?”

  “The night before he died. It was very sad for everyone, his death. And the way it happened,” he shook his head. “It was not a good death.”

  “No, it wasn’t. What did you tell him about the wolves?”

  “The same thing I told you, that I hear one or more sometimes at night near El Puerto.”

  “Where do you live?” I asked him.

  “On Yolanda’s family’s ranch on the east side of the Soledad Peaks.”

  “The Sanchez place?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Does she hear them, too?”

  “No, she doesn’t hear good. She is my eyes, I am her ears.”

  “How far do you live from El Puerto?”

  “About eight miles, I think.”

  “What did Bob Bartel say when you told him?”

  “Thank you,” Ernesto said.

  “Me, too.”

  “What?”

  “Mil gracias,” I said.

  ******

  It was dark when I got back to Albuquerque, and I could see the city lights from miles away. Heat lightning flashed over Lucero Mesa but it didn’t thunder and it didn’t rain. A half-moon was hanging on over the Manzanos, illuminating the 328,000-acre Ortiz land grant. The same moon shone on that place when the dinosaurs owned it, when the lobos were king, when the Indians wept and the conquerors conquered. In August the corn grows a foot, they say, under its influence. It wasn’t a misty, secretive Eastern moon, it was the kind of clear silver moon that illuminates the truth but still leaves room for the imagination. Under an August moon it takes a long time to fall asleep, even with the windows closed and the air conditioner humming. I spent a couple of hours chasing my thoughts around the bed, wishing I’d told the Kid when I was coming home. Cuervo Gold wasn’t doing any good. If I’d had a Xanax I would have taken it, which was one reason why I didn’t have any. I got up and started pacing my apartment from the bedroom to the living room and back again, wearing a path through the carpet’s deep shag.

  ******

  The real estate closing I’d come back for took place at the bank the next day at ten. It was close to noon by the time I got to the office and Anna and Brink were making plans for lunch. It was either the Olive Garden or Garduños. Anna handed me a message from Juan Sololobo. “Where do people get names like that?” she asked.

  It was a rhetorical question, so I ignored it, went into my office and picked up the phone, but instead of calling Juan back I dialed the Big Sky State, Montana.

  “My old buddy, Neil Hamel,” March said. “What’s happening now?”

  “Juan could be getting off the hook.”

  “I told you you’d do it, didn’t I?”

  “I didn’t do much, except to mention the possibility of federal intervention. As soon as he heard that, Don Phillips, the rancher, came up with the theory that Bartel happened on smugglers who mistook him for la migra and shot him. He even produced some evidence to support it.”

  “It’s plausible, isn’t it, so close to the border?”

  “It’s also plausible that Bartel caught Buddy Ohles, the ADC hunter, doing something illegal, he caught Don Phillips doing something illegal, or he caught somebody else doing something illegal. It could be tempting to the Phillipses to get into illegal activities; they can’t be making very much money ranching.”

  “Why not? That ranch was probably paid for one hundred years ago. Ranchers like to cry poor, but they do better than people think, the smart ones anyway.”

  “The Phillipses aren’t dumb.”

  “There’s still no real evidence pointing to Juan, is there?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “How’s he holding up?”

  “Staying fluid.”

  “I know he’s been in trouble, but you don’t really think he’s capable of murder, do you?”

  “Maybe not cold-blooded, calculated murder, but emotional, surprised with the weapon in his hand, guilty and frightened murder? Who’s not capable under those conditions?”

  “But why would Juan have a weapon in his hand unless he was deliberately going after Bartel?”

  Why indeed? “I don’t know. I also talked to the biologist, Norman Alexander, who was the wolf expert in Alaska. He lives on the other side of the peaks from Jayne. Do you know anything about him? First he says he retired, then he tells me he quit. Frank Boyd, who was Bartel’s supervisor, says he didn’t retire.”

  “There was a research biologist in Alaska who got fired five or six years ago when I was still getting paid in sunsets by working for the Interior Department,” March said. “The story was he got carried away with his experiments and his high-tech methods. Thought a Yagi antenna made him God.”

  “That sounds like Alexander. He’s into high tech and capab
le of thinking he’s God.”

  “If he was smart he got a fat settlement like I did when the government fired me.”

  He’d used part of it to pay my legal fees. “I’ve been living off it ever since,” I said.

  “Sure,” March laughed. He has the best laugh south of the Yukon and it came wrapped in a thick red beard, too. I remembered all of it well.

  “Alexander told me that Bartel could have picked up the signal of a lion that Buddy was tracking and known that it was being tracked,” I said.

  “I’m not sure you’d be able to tell that from a radio signal. You can track the movement, but to interpret the movement? I don’t know.”

  “How far do those signals reach, anyway?”

  “Depends on how good your equipment is, whether you’re in the desert or the jungle, whether your transmitter is on a turtle or a giraffe. The more elevated the signal or the receiver, the further the signal will reach. An airplane can track a signal twenty miles away. On the ground you ought to be able to pick up a signal for five miles.”

  “Suppose a mountain got in the way?”

  “You’d still get a signal but it wouldn’t be as clear.”

  “Norm Alexander told me signals reached a maximum of three miles.”

  “Well, in the years since he’s been out of the business, the equipment has improved.”

  “Bartel said that researchers in the same area use similar frequencies so they can keep track of each other’s collars.”

  “That’s true, they do.”

  “Suppose someone didn’t want anyone else keeping track of his collars.”

  “He’d pick a remote location where there weren’t a lot of researchers around. He’d choose signals at the extreme high or low frequency range, and hope nobody went looking for them. They could still be found if someone had a good antenna and took the trouble to go carefully through the dial like he was searching for a hard-to-find radio station, but who would do that? Do you care who did it if Juan is no longer a suspect?”

  “Unprofessional of me, I know, but it seems like Bob Bartel deserves that much. You’d care, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yeah,” March said, “but I’m not a lawyer.”

  Sometimes I felt that I wasn’t either.

  “You’ll let me know what happens?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  The next call was to Juan Sololobo, who answered on the first ring. “Perla Phillips told Jayne that you and Don came across proof that Bartel was killed by drug smugglers,” he said.

  Stories have a way of getting twisted in the telling. As this one was at least on its fourth round, you’d have to expect some distortion. “We came across evidence that someone was on the Phillips ranch. I’m not sure what it proves, if anything.”

  “Ohweiler thinks it’s leading somewhere.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I called him.”

  It was too hot for this. “Juan, I told you not to talk to him,” I said in a voice that dripped irritation.

  “You didn’t call me back and I had to know.” Juan was sounding rather petulant himself. “I didn’t tell him anything. I just asked if they had another suspect and he said they did but I shouldn’t be leaving town just yet.”

  “You’ll let me know if anything new develops, won’t you?” I said, dripping sarcasm this time.

  “Sure,” he answered.

  To see just how distorted this story had gotten in the telling, I called Ohweiler next. “I told you not to talk to my client,” I said.

  “Not a heck of a lot I can do about it when he calls me, ma’am.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “He’s the one who ought to be telling you that.”

  “He did, but I want to hear your side.”

  “I told him that I went out to the Phillips ranch and Don showed me the campfire and the dead calf. I told him it looked like Bartel coulda been killed by some wetback crossing the Phillips ranch who mistook him for la migra, but that I wouldn’t suggest your client leave town just yet.”

  “Are you going to call the feds in on this? Bartel was probably on duty when he was killed.”

  “His job was researching wildlife. If he was killed for being la migra he wasn’t killed for doin’ his job so that makes it a gray area. It looks like a pretty simple case to me. I believe I can handle it,” Ohweiler said.

  ******

  I was in the front office giving Anna a tape I’d dictated when the bass on wheels pulled up. “Must be 5 o’clock,” I said, glancing at the clock on Anna’s desk, which read five minutes to. Brink, who had nothing better to do, looked out the window and was dazzled by the shiny chrome, wire wheels and slick paint job of Stevie’s blue and white Impala. Low riders are designed for beauty—not speed, or fuel efficiency either. Around here gawking at them is what they call breaking neck; Brink’s neck had been broken. “That car is cherry!” he said to Anna.

  “Cherry?” said I. “I’ve always wondered what that means exactly. Like a … virgin?”

  “It means, you know, something that’s been fixed up better than new, doesn’t it?” he asked our resident expert, Anna, raising his eyebrows as he posed the question. “Kind of like Cher or Jane Fonda.”

  “What would you call it?” Anna asked me. “Neat? Groovy? As in like wow, that’s a groovy car? Or primo? How about priiiiimo?”

  “I’d call it a waste of money. I suppose Stevie’s a member of a car club.”

  “So?” said Anna.

  “Which one? Elvis from Hell? Albuquerque Anarchists? Bernalillo Bandidos?”

  “Wrong. Those are Frisbee teams. He’s a member of the Vagabonds.”

  “Are you guys going to the bed-dancing contest?” Brink asked. Lowriders have made a performing art out of raising and lowering their cars with hydraulic lifts. The best displays, however, are the beds of trucks that can be moved up, down and sideways, too, with lightning speed. They get together in parking lots to shimmy and shake. The one with the most action wins, but I couldn’t say what.

  “We might.” Anna looked at the clock and out the window at the waiting Stevie. There was no need for him to beep; his stereo had long ago announced his presence.

  “Isn’t it time for Blast Off Sound Systems to have their annual stereo throwing contest?” I asked. “Maybe Stevie would like to donate his for charity.”

  Anna ignored me. Stevie lifted his hand slowly from the chain-link steering wheel, put it back down. It would be an exaggeration to call it anything as committed as a wave. “Are you through?” she asked.

  “Sure, take off,” said Brink who hadn’t, as far as I’d noticed, ever begun.

  ******

  One of the best ways not to feel like a lawyer on those days when I don’t want to feel like a lawyer is to mix up a batch of Jell-O shots and have the Kid over for dinner. I got home late so he brought the dinner, sopapillas from Paco’s, not as good as the sopapillas from Arriba Tacos in Santa Fe, but hot enough to remind you that you were in the state where people ask if they need a visa to visit and whether it’s safe to drink the water. We sat on my deck slurping cool green Jell-O shots and eating red-hot sopapillas, but it wasn’t doing a thing to lower my body’s temperature. The blue sky sat on the Sandias’ elephant-gray back. Not a cumulonimbus, cirrus or lenticular was in sight. The air was a weight squishing me into my deck chair, embedding the plastic webbing into the back of my thighs. A boom box somewhere played white rapper Vanilla Ice. It would be either Freon hum or boom box beat tonight.

  “Well, hang in there and pray for rain,” I said.

  “That doesn’t sound like you, Chiquita,” said the Kid.

  “It’s not,” I replied. A ninety-five-year-old rancher had taken temporary possession of my vocal cords.

  We finished our dinner and I cleaned up by taking the paper wrappings inside and throwing them away. When it was this hot the only solution is to break a sweat by getting even hotter. I went back out to the deck, rested my cheek against the t
op of the Kid’s thick and curly head. He has curls that you can sink your head or your hand into. They’d be outstanding in piloerection and not bad sprawled across my pillow either.

  “Kid, why don’t we…”

  “Okay,” he said.

  ******

  Later on when we were lying on the sheets naked, sweaty and cool at last, I watched the lights shine in through the drapes and listened to the Kid’s breath sink into sleep. I punched his shoulder. “You awake, Kid?” I said.

  “Chiquita, please, I’m tired. I work hard all day.”

  No one works harder than a Mexican, they say. The Kid wasn’t exactly a Mexican. He had grown up there though, which was what I wanted to talk to him about. He never talked about his past, but I’d never asked, not in the middle of the night anyway. “I know but I need to talk to you, Kid.”

  “Now?”

  “It’s important.”

  He groaned. “Digame.”

  “What were you doing with the Norteños?”

  “Why do you want to know that now?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “I lived with them for a year before I came here. I was only a boy then, seventeen years old.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  He shrugged his skinny shoulder. “It was an adventure. They own that part of the Sierra Madre and I wanted to cross it.”

  “Did you ever bring any drugs over?”

  “Marijuana sometimes, cocaina never. You’re illegal if you bring marijuana, you’re illegal if you bring nothing. People kill you for drugs, they kill you for your shoes. Why not make some money? You bought and smoked marijuana when you were seventeen, no?”

  “Yes.”

  “I used the money to start my business.”

  “Do you ever hear from the Norteños?”

  “Sometimes when they come to Albuquerque they stay at my house.”

  “Isn’t that dangerous?”

  The Kid squirmed, squeezed his pillow. “So many questions, Chiquita, for one night.”