His glance seemed to slice right though her. “I’m afraid…no. I don’t.”
“Christmas morning, 1871. General Crook’s men, led by his famous Apache scouts, who are actually Pima and Maricopa, our traditional enemies—but no one can tell us apart, or bothers to, and even ‘Apache’ is, you know, their word, not ours—they slaughter men and women and children hiding in a cave not that far from here.” He gestured to the northwest. “A captured Yavapai boy, Hoomothya, guides them there against his will, and he watches as, you know, it happens. Right up until the death chants end. He writes about it much later. Interesting book. All of My People Were Killed.”
Lisa felt a sudden shameful warmth, like a head-to-toe sunburn.
He returned his eyes to the statue. “As for Ol’ Poncho here—Mexican government offers this thing as a gift to the people of Phoenix, or a suburb, can’t remember which one. They refuse to take it.” A wry smile brushed across his face. “Even here, people file lawsuits twice to keep it out. And after it finally goes up, there are protests for years, but the picket lines gradually dwindle away. So here it is.”
Scratching an itch at the back of her memory, Lisa said, “Right. He crossed over the border, murdered some people.”
“Fifteen civilians. Plus some soldiers.”
“They chased him into Mexico, but…”
“Blackjack Pershing has no more luck catching Poncho Villa than General Crook before him, trying to find Cochise. And that continues to rankle some folks here. Like the man you and I have in common.”
He turned back toward her, his expression strangely both warm and stern.
“Gideon Littmann,” she said.
“Which judge was assigned to your case?”
“Let me check.” She opened her valise, searched through the file-stamped pleadings. “Here it is.” Handing him the complaint. “Celestina Numkena.”
He smiled, taking the document from her. “Lucky draw.”
“That’s good?”
“She’s a very impressive woman.” He paged through the document. “I can’t imagine her putting up too much with Littmann.”
Lisa felt her shoulders ease down from her ears. “All I ask of a judge,” she said, “is that she read my pleadings, listen to my arguments, and rule fairly.”
“You’re going to need a lot more than that.” He set the complaint beside him on the bench, crossed his legs, lifted his eyes to the sky, and dug a cigarette pack from the inside pocket of his sport coat. “Make yourself comfortable. This is kinda, you know, involved.”
***
Rags tossed his flavorless wad of gum across the sun-cracked hardpan, standing in what passed for a front yard—ramshackle bungalow, long abandoned, out on a lonesome two-lane road. The buckling asphalt stretched east and west, dusted with windblown sand and marked by a single roadside sign: Drive Hammered—Get Nailed! It was peppered with bullet holes.
Nothing else around for nearly a click, and even then just a rusting caravan perched on blocks, an ancient VHF antenna pinning it in place, no vehicles parked outside.
Welcome to Crazy Acres, he thought.
Beyond that perimeter lay sagebrush desert and alkali flats spreading in all directions toward jagged eruptions of sky-island rock—Santa Rita range due west, Huachuca Mountains a little to the south, Whetstones to the northeast.
It was in the Huachucas that the renegade Chatto began his famous raid, the beginning of the end of the Apache wars, butchering every white man he came across for the sake of bullets and horses, then fleeing south over the border.
And it was in the Whetstones where Juh—husband of Geronimo’s favorite sister, Ishton—sprang his trap and got revenge for the U.S. Army butchering a camp of peaceful Mescaleros.
Rags often likened the fight in Afghanistan to the Indian wars, and the more he read, the more apt the analogy felt. It was no coincidence the military likened the Taliban’s tactics in the siege of Barge Matal to those of the Apache, or compared how the Durand Line bordering Pakistan provided the same strategic advantage to the Taliban that the Mexican border had for Victorio and Cochise and Geronimo.
But the similarities ran deeper, from the inventively cruel ferocity of the adversary to the constant political meddling in the rules of engagement. It wasn’t hard, in either war, to gain a greater respect for the enemy than one’s own chain of command, or the chicken-shit civilians you were supposedly fighting for.
It wasn’t just that aspect of the history, though, that stirred his reflections.
The West had welcomed men like him, veterans of a godless Holy War that turned its soldiers into strangers and drifters and misfits. Nothing like miles and miles of rugged terrain to exorcise the devils of memory.
To Rags, though, the territory felt like home. He’d grown up not that far north in Winslow. Chalky came from a high desert small town, too—Barstow, across the California line—and like Rags had spent his boyhood buck hunting, fly fishing, camping alone in the mountain wild, nothing but fragrant pines and a star-dusted sky for company.
Wander and BBK were the city boys, Reno and Compton, respectively. Irregular warfare training in the desert at Twenty-Nine Palms cured them of their urban stupidities. If not, the Battle of Marja sure did.
But none of them had been involved in finding this hideaway. That was Tuck Mercer’s doing—said it came up fast this morning on the Internet listings, properties for sale, ten grand or under, most unlivable, like this one, valuable solely for the dirt beneath the concrete slab.
Maybe all that was true. But Rags couldn’t help thinking the old rodeo hand, the famous forger, was a little too eager to chip in, lend a hand, like he’d been planning all this for a little longer than any of them knew.
And the thought of getting dragged into another man’s fight, after all they’d been through at the hands of the Karzais and their cronies in the Land of Bones…
Enough of that, he thought. Work to do. There was a fat Italian phony to question. While he still could manage to get out the words.
CHAPTER 23
Wind rustled the leaves of the small park’s shade trees as Elan Wingfield conducted the elaborate ritual of lighting up—poking a lazy finger inside the pack, fishing out a cigarette. The man possessed excruciating patience—Lisa had to restrain herself from reaching over, snatching the pack, and holding it ransom until he spoke.
“Various tribes,” he said finally, “not just the Yavapai-Apache but the Chiricahua, Mescalero, Zuni, Hopi, several others—we all have the right to return to the Coronado National Forest and the Dragoon Mountains to forage for desert willow, yucca root, devil’s claw. The shoots and seed pods are used to make burden baskets, parching trays.” He tapped his unlit cigarette hard against the back of his hand once, twice, three times. “About a year-and-a-half ago, a group of Yavapai-Apache women—”
“I’m sorry,” Lisa interrupted, thinking: Don’t be testy. “You said you were Yavapai. So that’s a sub-group, sub-tribe—I’m sorry I don’t know the term—of Apache?”
“No. The Yavapai and Apache are distinct tribes, from completely different language groups: Yuman, Athabaskan. The government doesn’t know the difference, so they mix us all together, call us one tribe. Because, you know, they can.”
He lipped his cigarette, tugged a match from its matchbook, and struck it against the flint strip till a flame came to life in his cupped hand.
“I’m sorry,” Lisa said again, surrendering at last to the man’s expansive sense of time. “I didn’t mean to butt in.”
“It’s fine.” He waved out the match. “Where was I?”
“A group of women. The Dragoons.”
“Right. So these women are foraging along the mountain ridges—just above where Littmann has his ranch, the Bristlecone—when a band of armed men drive up in a Range Rover. The women, they figure these guys for hunters. Folks still go up there looking for cougars, coyotes, whitetail. Anyway, the men get out and tell the women they gotta leave. Now.”
&
nbsp; No one else around for miles, Lisa thought, picturing it.
“The women protest, say this is public land, they have a legal right. That gets several rifles pointed their direction, one guy fires in the air—redneck punctuation—says something like, ‘How’s that for a legal right?’”
Lisa swallowed, a nervous reflex, wondering how much of this story was meant to serve as background, how much as prediction.
“The women come back to Camp Verde, tell the tribal elders, who pass it along to the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Whiteriver, who pass it along to someone else who passes it along again. You get the idea.”
“Pretty much. Yeah.”
“A month later, another group heads off to forage, this time with some men, you know, just in case. I’m one of the men. Nobody drives us off this time.”
A deep, contemplative drag, exhaling the smoke in a long curling plume.
Lisa ventured, “But…”
“We don’t encounter any gunmen. We do find something, though. Along the central ridgeline, somewhere mid-range.” He squinted slightly, as though sharpening his focus on the scene in his mind. “There aren’t a lot of tall trees up there, even in the forest along the northern slope. All the pines and junipers and larger oaks, you know, get cut down and sent to sawmills during the Tombstone boom. Except for the protected areas around Cochise Stronghold, all that’s left now is some mesquite, ironwood, emory oak. Scrub, basically. So if you want to hang someone, you need to put up your own scaffold. Or, in this case, three.”
He tapped ash onto the sidewalk. Lisa pictured Golgotha.
“Simple structure, old-time gallows—no platform or drop door, just two four-by-fours, one planted deep in the dirt, some big rocks to prop it up and hold it straight, the other beam parallel to the ground, an angled brace between the two to handle the weight of the body.”
Still staring into some imaginary distance. Another of his customary silences.
“The lack of a long drop,” he said finally, “means the victim’s neck won’t break. Takes a long time to die.”
From the opposite side of the park, a homeless woman—skin dark from cirrhosis, barefoot, shawled in a dirty blanket and wearing a feathered Homburg—shuffled toward them, trailed by two panting dogs. Glancing up, she spotted Elan and Lisa on their bench, then took an immediate detour, angling away beyond the statue. The two dogs followed.
Lisa said, “Asunción, the woman who gave me your name, she said her sister…”
“Yes. She’s one of the three we find. Her daughter, too.”
“How old?” she asked, almost hating to.
“Young,” Elan said. “Eight or so, I think. A child.”
He dropped his cigarette butt onto the sidewalk, crushed it with the toe of his boot. Then he picked it up, tossed it toward a nearby trash bin. Missed.
“We contact the sheriff for Cochise County, since that’s where the Dragoons lie. He calls Border Patrol, and they fight over who has jurisdiction because, you know, neither wants it. Same old thing. The story makes the local news for a day but goes nowhere, just another bunch of mojados found dead after crossing the border, happens all the time. The fact they’ve been strung up like old-time horse thieves gets shrugged off, blamed on the coyotes who brought them across. Probably tried to shake down the pollos for more money mid-trip. They can’t pay, so they get left as an example to others.”
“But you don’t believe that.”
“Couple days later, Piper Cub flies along the border dropping leaflets. Thousands of them, from Douglas to the Huachucas, they end up both sides of the border. The leaflets have a picture of the three bodies we found hanging by the neck.”
Lisa said, “I’ll bet I can guess the caption.”
No pasaran.
***
Giordano, stripped naked, his rippling pinkish fat exposed, stood tiptoe on the concrete slab, handcuffed to a rusty four-inch pipe that ran along the ceiling of the garage. No blood, they’d been careful. But the skin on his torso had erupted in florid bruising here and there from internal hemorrhaging.
Chalky had monitored the man’s condition, checking the carotid artery for pulse, placing an ear to his chest to gauge heart rate, monitor the fluid building in the lungs.
Chalky had served as corpsman for their platoon over in Helmand, but he’d finally turned in his medical kit for a .50 cal sniper rifle after zipping one too many marines into a glad bag. He was doubly blessed in skill set, equally capable of stitching you up on a highback’s tailgate or blowing out your eye at 300 yards.
Once Chalky nodded to assure them all the prisoner was fit, Rags drew close, raised the man’s chin so their eyes met.
“I’m not the kind to run to lawyers,” he said. “Where I come from, somebody steals something from you, you steal it back.”
Giordano’s head lolled on his neck. His eyes swam.
“Now you’ve got an opportunity to make up for what you did to my girl. Look at yourself. Same thing happening to you, you did to her. Know what that’s called?”
Rayella, standing to the side, said, “It’s called justice,” answering for Giordano who, after all, couldn’t speak. Duct tape still sealed his mouth shut.
“Let me be clear,” Rags said. “Every man here’s a trained killer—well, except for you. When it comes to pain, we know our business. All that stuff you hear about torture doesn’t work? It’s a lie. Torture works swell. Depends on how much time and ingenuity you’re willing to put into it.”
Chalky, Wander, and BBK all moved a little closer. Rayella stepped back.
“Now I know what you said to my girl after you popped her, knocked her down, tied her up. Don’t pretend you don’t remember. Started off something like, ‘Not to worry, Skank. You’re so damn ugly, I wouldn’t rape you with some other guy’s dick.’ Words to that effect. Am I right? Now here’s the thing—I’m gonna give you a chance to make it up to her. I’m gonna give you a chance to walk away clean. How’s that sound?”
Rags jiggled Giordano’s chin. Somewhere deep in the scared man’s eyes, a bolt of hope flickered.
“Give me the layout of Littmann’s house, down to the last room. I want to know ways in, ways out, where the outbuildings are. I want to know how many people work there, where they are any time of the day. And when Littmann comes and goes.”
“Security system,” Chalky said, taking out a notepad to write on. “Don’t leave that out.”
“I’m in no mood to hear ‘I don’t know,’” Rags said. “Thing is—and you really need to understand this—thing is, for men like us, everything we’ve been through, everything we’ve been asked to do, everything we’ve gone ahead and done, there’s no doubt or hesitation once we know the answer to one simple question: Who’s the enemy? Not a blot on our conscience once that’s clear. And that’s where we’re at right now, with you—understand?”
The men edged still closer. Giordano nodded.
“Good man,” Rags said. “Now you’ve already been through a lot. Nothing you didn’t deserve, but still. You want to spare yourself more of the same, don’t play dumb.”
He began unraveling the duct tape wrapped tight around Giordano’s head. The last few turns snagged hair and flesh. Giordano winced, jerking his head away.
Rags said, “Steady, steady. Almost there.”
Once the tape was free, long and twisted like a shed snakeskin, Rags handed it to BBK who placed it inside a large black trash bag where they’d stuffed the man’s clothes.
“All set?”
Wander stepped behind Rags, the better to watch Giordano as he told them what he knew—no surprise, he didn’t even try to act tough. Between whimpers, ragged breaths, and sniveling pleas he explained not just the geography, which Chalky sketched out in his notepad, but the personnel, which told a more complicated story.
Littmann had his own security squad on site, usually four men, two at the gate, one in the house, one on patrol around the ranch’s perimeter. But they were part of a larger group
of volunteers spread out across the county, ready to answer any call. Because of them, the alarm system seldom got used, unless the house was empty, which it seldom was, since the wife was an invalid, half blind or something.
With every phrase, Wander repeated the words verbatim—not to memorize, but to mimic, get the inflection and tone just right, the accent, the rhythm.
At one point, mustering his last shred of pride, Giordano looked up and said, “What are you, a parrot?”
Everybody laughed. Then BBK delivered a thudding blow to the lower back. Giordano, finally able to cry out, let out a sharp keening bark of pain.
“We make the jokes, tubs.” Wander talking, though it could have been Giordano himself. The man looked stunned, as though coming face to face with his own echo.
Wander said, “Now I know what you’re thinking,” same voice, eerie in its perfection. “I got a gift. Could be famous. Play Vegas, play Hooters, do the Tonight Show. Could be rich. Here’s the thing—I hate the whole showbiz scene. Comedians, in particular. Met Seinfeld once, no lie. Backstage at the MGM in Reno. Total snooty boojwah shmuck. I swear—came this close to ripping him a new one.”
He held up his forefinger and thumb a micrometer apart.
“And there’s the irony, ya know? I’d be in prison for murder within six months, I tried to do this legit. Hollywood gasbags? Hecklers? Fuhgeddaboudit. Combat changes you, Guido. Just can’t deal with phonies no more. Know what I mean? Guys like you.”
The whole room seemed dazed. Chalky murmured, “Sweet Jesus… How do you do that?”
“I binge-watched The Sopranos,” Wander said. “Like this pudge.”
Giordano hung there, wincing with each rough breath. Even so, he managed finally to lift his head, meet Rags’s eye, and whisper, “Mercer...The forger...”
Each man glanced at the other, then Rags leaned in. “What about him?”
“He’s fucking you. Fucking everybody...”
Rags waited. “Care to elaborate?”
The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday Page 11
