“Thanks,” I said, and turned sideways, elbow on the table. “Gastner,” I said.
“You about ready to go, sir?” Robert Torrez asked.
“Yep. Give me five minutes to finish up here and then run my son and grandson home.”
“We’ll pick you up on the way.”
I switched off and sighed. “So much for peace and quiet,” I said.
Chapter Nineteen
Cliff Larson rode with the passenger window open, letting the brisk air suck out the smoke from his incessant cigarette. I had traded the aging, clanking Bronco for the unmarked sedan that Howard Bishop had just parked, its interior still pleasantly warm.
A thousand yards behind us were Undersheriff Robert Torrez and Deputy Thomas Pasquale.
During the past two hours, Larson had done more than encourage his emphysema. He’d spent time on the phone, and added to our log of information. None of it improved my mood.
The dealer in Oklahoma, Mickey Emerson, caught with stolen cattle and ready to make any kind of deal that might save his own hide, had cheerfully told Comanche County sheriff’s deputies everything they wanted to know. And it all pointed at Dale Torrance, the nineteen-year-old kid from Posadas, New Mexico.
Emerson had a copy of a transportation permit for the eighteen calves signed by Cliff Larson, and the sheriff’s investigator in Oklahoma faxed us a copy. Mickey Emerson had used that document as all the background he needed to cut a bill of sale. He didn’t look at it too closely. He paid Dale Torrance in cash, $285 for each late yearling steer-a nice bundle, even though considerably below the market price at the time.
“Pretty slick,” Cliff mused. He had his briefcase open on the seat beside him, with the year’s file of permits. “But dumber’n a post. Dale used permit two eight one oh eight.” Larson held up the clipped file. “I wrote that to his dad earlier in the summer when he was movin’ stock from the home ranch over to a Forest Service lease on Johnny Boyd’s spread.”
“He didn’t even change the number of the permit?”
“Hell no. Course, that’s harder to do.” He held up the permit, assuming I could glance over and see the number at the bottom of the page. “He did fudge some other changes, though.”
“And the name? How did he pass that off? The cattle belong to Miles Waddell, not Torrance.”
“Well, see, that’s the beauty of usin’ correction fluid, and then makin’ a fresh copy on somebody’s copier somewheres.”
“The permits aren’t color-coded?”
“Hell yes, they are. But who’s going to keep track of that? White, blue, goldenrod, yellow, green. You think if he got stopped by a trooper on a spot check that the cop would give a damn? Or even know in the first place?” He grinned. “State police would say that’s not their job. And a cowpuncher with a load of calves in a goose-neck trailer ain’t all that suspicious in ranchin’ country. And Oklahoma authorities don’t have the same system we do. And it don’t appear that Mickey Emerson looked all that close. Or wanted to.”
“I wouldn’t have thought that the livestock market was so hot that it’d pay. What did he get? Two eighty-five? That’s a good price, but what’s Emerson stand to gain at sale? A few bucks a head. As much as a hundred per calf at the most? Why did he bother?”
“Because he could,” Larson said. “Ever wonder why somebody goes to all the trouble to take a crowbar to a parkin’ meter for a few lousy nickels and dimes?” He shrugged. “I mean, first the son of a bitch has to steal a crowbar, right? For a few minutes of his time, Emerson picks up maybe a hundred bucks apiece, and that’s almost two grand that he didn’t have before.” He crushed out his cigarette. “I imagine you’ve seen a lot worse done for two thousand bucks.”
“Of course,” I said. “Over and over and over. And it still never ceases to amaze the hell out of me. This Emerson fellow is positive it was Dale?”
“One hundred percent. I faxed the Comanche deputies a copy of Dale Torrance’s yearbook picture. No question about it. Emerson said he’d swear to it in court. And he’s got Dale’s signature on his copy of the bill of sale.”
“They’re going to want to extradite him, I’m sure.”
“Don’t count on it. They’re willing to impound the cattle for us, but they want them gone. It’s a pain in the ass for them and Oklahoma sure as hell doesn’t want to pay feed bills on eighteen head of hungry steers that are New Mexico’s problem. But we’ll let Dan Schroeder figure all that out. Hell, even if they wanted to prosecute over in Oklahoma, they’d have to stand in line. By the time New Mexico gets through with old Dale, he ain’t goin’ to be a teenager no more.” I wasn’t sure that I shared Larson’s grim satisfaction.
About twenty-five miles west of Posadas we turned south on the washboard gravel of County Road 14. Torrez kept his distance. There was no point in eating our dust. More important, by staying far enough back, we wouldn’t look like an ominous convoy bearing down on the prey. The last thing I wanted was to spook the kid.
I didn’t know what would be going through Dale’s mind. I didn’t know if he felt confident that he’d pulled off the perfect crime, or if he was a little jumpy, looking over his shoulder like a scared jackrabbit. He wasn’t stupid by nature. He had to know that what he’d done would land him in a world of trouble if he were caught.
If the heat were turned on, Dale had an example to follow, and that made me uneasy all over again. When Dale’s older brother Patrick had gotten himself in a pickle a couple of years before, he’d headed for Gillette, Wyoming. His had been woman troubles, too-but in Patrick’s case, the gal who’d twanged his heartstrings was a real wild hare who didn’t think about the legalities of what she did for more than a couple of seconds. Patrick had decided that running from her was the smartest thing he could do at the time.
I didn’t think that younger brother Dale was going to run away from Christine Prescott. Less than twenty-four hours before, I’d gotten the impression that Christine was a good deal more than just a beautiful face and stunning figure. To be a successful bartender for Victor Sanchez’s Broken Spur Saloon, she needed to be hardworking, levelheaded, honest, and tolerant. Sanchez was barely on the up side of nasty. Her boss may have had the personality of a sun-struck rattlesnake, but as long as he stayed in the kitchen, none of his customers much cared, and Christine Prescott could cope with his moods.
We all assumed that Dale Torrance had stolen eighteen head of cattle for ready cash. Whether he needed that $5,130 to impress Christine somehow, or for some other reason only he knew, it couldn’t be news to Dale that a century before, that stunt would have earned him a new rope.
Five miles farther south, we passed under the entryway for the H-Bar-T. The archway was one of those fancy scenes plasma-cut into black iron, this one featuring a cowpuncher on horseback chasing a herd of cattle through the yucca, lariat in full loop over his head.
The Torrance home was as out of place in that bleak, stark country as a Rhode Island license plate. The two-story affair was one of those things offered in catalogs back in the fifties, the white paint trying its best to gleam after a season of pounding sun.
Just before the driveway, the ranch road forked, with a trail leading around a paddock, shed, and copse of leafless elms to an older model, red-and-white mobile home.
“I think we’re late for the party,” Cliff Larson said, and my heart skipped a beat. Herb Torrance’s pickup, habitually crusted with mud and range dust, was pulled up in front of the front steps of the house. Another older model pickup with dual back tires was nosed in beside the mobile home. No amount of road dirt could hide its battle scars, the fenders and flanks dented and torn from a long, hard life.
Parked immediately behind it, half blocking the driveway, was the truck we’d seen just a couple of hours before carrying Miles Waddell and friends.