“Very thorough.”
“They went back down Route Fifteen and recovered the heroin. Rocko concealed it in the camper. They made camp well off the road by a dry stream bed another ten or twenty miles down the road. Rocko was in a foul mood. Minda, humming and burning with energy, was doing the cooking, washing, laundry, mending, housekeeping, and taking care of Bix, her hair and her person. During the second day at that place, she began complaining to Rocko that they were neariy out of cooking gas, that the gauge was way down. When would he get it filled? She was sick of having to make fires with sticks when they were out of gas. He paid no attention. And then she said that at least the border people hadn’t let the gas out of the tank, and she should be grateful for that much. He jumped up and ran and examined the tank. The fill valve and the outlet valve were part of the brass assembly that was- fastened onto the top of the tank. They drove south and at Hermosillo he bought two small pipe wrenches and got the whole assembly off. The orifice was just large enough so that by rolling the plastic bags between his palms he could make them small enough to drop into the tank. He put one in the tank and had it refilled at Hermosillo. Three days later he let the gas escape and, with some difficulty apparently, got the bag out. It looked and tasted fresh and unharmed, so he loaded the bags into the tank and got it filled again. Nesta thought he would start for the border right away. But Rocko was unexpectedly relaxed and unhurried. There was a pretty good piece of Bix’s money left. They might as well see the country. He became very charming.”
“Life of the party.”
“Sure. He even had a special little treat for Carl Sessions. On the way south in Ciudad Obregon he picked up a hypo and some distilled water, some cotton swabs and some alcohol, and he fixed his good friend Sessions a nice little pop and injected it under the skin on the underside of his forearm. Sessions got very sick from it. But Rocko kept helping him out until finally Carl could inject himself and feel very good. Then when he had worked up to injecting it directly into the blood stream and felt very, very good, Rocko talked him into sharing his new talent with Bix.”
“I know why you said you feel sick.”
“That Walter Rockland is a real charmer. All heart. So our little caravan came wandering through the mountains on down here to Oaxaca. And the flavor changed, or, I might say, the alignment. Minda got sick. Nesta was appointed by Rocko to look after Bix. When he refused, Rocko beat the hell out of him. He said he got to sort of like it after a while, scrubbing her and washing her hair. But he’d lost any physical desire for her. She and Carl Sessions had gone off into some country of their own, nodding and popping. Minda, scared by being sick, was stubbornly taking herself off the stimulants. I suppose as they are habituating rather than addicting, a person with enough will could do it. And she apparently, as if compensating, became ever more infatuated with Rocko in a purely physical way. After they were here a while, Rocko started to cut off the supply to Carl and Bix. He would let them get sick before he would dole out a very small amount. One day Nesta took Bix off somewhere on some errand. He had wanted to get out of Rocko’s way because Rocko was on one of his rare drunks, when he was inclined to get violent and nasty. When he came back, Carl wasn’t there. Rocko was asleep, snoring loudly. Minda was in some kind of shock. For a long time Nesta couldn’t find out what happened. Then he learned that Carl had come pleading and begging to Rocko. Rocko, in Minda’s presence, had asked Carl if he would do anything in the world for a fix. Carl said he would. And after he had stripped down, as Rocko asked, Rocko boosted him up into. the double bed over the cab and climbed up in there with him, and Minda went running out. She heard Carl crying. That apparently finished it for Minda. A few days later she left and took Bix with her. Nesta said Rocko seemed perfectly content to have them gone for good, all three of them. Nesta stayed on. But he began to have the feeling that Rocko was watching him and planning how to kill him. It could have been an induced paranoid hallucination. But he took off, by then in very bad shape, and gradually came out of it in Mifla, with the woman Luz taking care of him just the way he had taken care of Bix.”
“So now we know,” I said, “why Rocko reacted the way he did to having somebody pry that little door open and take that tank of gas. He knew it had to be taken by somebody who knew what was hidden in it. The first guess would be Sessions. So he would go looking for him.”
Meyer nodded. “Let’s say he didn’t find him. Sessions was found dead on the morning of the seventh. He could have stolen it, emptied it, hidden the stuff away, and died of an overdose.”
“Or once he found him, maybe he was satisfied Carl knew nothing about it. And it would be fair to assume Rocko had enough left on hand to stick much too much into Sessions.”
Meyer thought that over. Then he shook his head. “I can’t buy that, Travis. I can’t buy the idea that Rocko would kill anybody. Not then. Not at that time. Maybe now. Maybe he has been coming closer and closer. I think he gave it a lot of thought after he discovered a hiding place the border search had overlooked on the dry run. He knew that if he tried to cross with the whole group, five minutes of interrogation would crack any one of the other four, and the five of them would be busted. So they camped out, in wild areas. He knew that alone he could make it. Maybe he had plans of marketing it at ten times his cost, hiding the cash in the same place, crossing back with it, and running another batch over again, for the big final score. I think he must have thought of the obvious way out. Chunk them on the head and bury them out in the wastelands. It’s so completely efficient, he had to think about it. And if he didn’t do it, it is because he couldn’t bring himself to do it.”
“Because he is such a nice guy.”
“Because he decided they would destroy themselves if he nudged them in the right direction. And check his track record so far. Carl and Bix are gone. We don’t know about Minda McLeen. We know he’s batting five hundred. It could be seven fifty.”
“So who stole the little gas tank, Meyer?”
“You force me to guess? I would say that Carl Sessions talked about the Americano with a fortune in junk in the bottled gas tank, and I would guess that his addiction would put him into contact with some very rough local types, and it would be natural for them to check it out. And easy enough. So then Rocko would be compelled to pick up another stake, so he could go make another buy, hide it in another tank, and take it across alone. So he went cruising, and he let Bruce Bundy pick him up, but it didn’t work out the way he planned it. When he saw he wasn’t going to con any cash out of Bundy, he went cruising again, and came up with Minda’s father, Wally McLeen. So he would have heard by then that Bix and Minda were guests of Eva Vitrier.”
We were both silent, trying to appraise the possibilities. I said, “Remember? The girls quarreled. Minda left for Mexico Gity. So Rocko couldn’t contact her. Assume that when he took the Bundy car, he went right to the Vitrier place in La Colonia. And the next thing we know, it’s Sunday afternoon and he and Bix and the yellow car are way the hell up in those mountains.”
“It would be nice to talk to Eva Vitrier,” Meyer said.
“It would indeed. A total recluse, using a hell of a lot of money to buy total privacy, to build big walls. And she’s gone. Try and find out where.”
“Somebody could get into her place and look around.”
“Like me?”
“Well, any large, curious, agile fellow, let’s say.”
“And I get slapped into a cell out in that Zimatlan jail.”
Meyer shrugged. “I’ll be there every visitors’ day. Speaking of jail, what about our friend in there?”
“You’re in the best position to decide.”