When I reached the back fender, I stopped, flashlight still off. Cigarette smoke wafted out his open window.
“Benny? It’s Bill Gastner.”
“How you doin,’ Sheriff?” he said.
“Fine. Crack your door so I can see, will you?” He did, and the dome light flooded on. I moved up and relaxed a little when I could see both his hands. One held a sandwich of sorts, the other a plastic cup filled with coffee. “Long night?” I asked pleasantly.
“I figure this is as good a place as any,” he said.
“For what? You got insomnia?” I tried to keep my tone light, but it was hard. I could see the black butt of the Beretta. The rest of the gun was covered by his right leg.
“You’re out late too,” he said. “You want some coffee?” He hefted the cup and looked up at me.
“Sure.” I watched him reach for the thermos bottle and the cup-lid. He started to pour and then heard the noise at the same time as I did. “Boy,” he said, “somebody is sure pushin’ it hard on that highway.”
I decided it was time to cut the gab and get on with it. “That’s Deputy Torrez coming up the hill,” I said. Fernandez looked sharply at me. “Standard procedure,” I added. “A cop doesn’t usually go talk with a man with a gun unless there’s some backup…even if they’re all good friends.” Fernandez finished pouring and handed the coffee to me. I laid the flashlight on the roof and took the cup. “Benny, what are you doing up here?”
Fernandez took his time. I had always thought of Benny as something of a marshmallow. He had reminded me of all those Mexicans in the “B” Westerns, the folks who wore white cotton and were always being beaten and whipped by the bad guys. In the end, they rose up, armed with scythes, axes, and garden hoes. Maybe that was Benny’s mood just then. There was a certain hardness about the man. I saw the muscles of his cheek twitch, and he looked down into the dark depths of his coffee cup.
“Is there something illegal about sitting out in the night, Sheriff?” he asked.
“No. And there’s nothing illegal about carrying a gun in this state, either, Benny. Like the one under your leg there. But I kinda start wondering what you have in mind. It’s hard to see rabbits in the dark. It’s illegal to jacklight deer. This isn’t good snake country.” I paused and sipped my coffee, keeping my eyes on his hands. “But as long as the weapon isn’t concealed and loaded at the same time, you can walk down Grande Boulevard with it. You might make a few folks nervous, just like you’re making me nervous right now. You’re hunting, Benny, and that makes me nervous. Who?”
Fernandez reached down and picked up the big Beretta. I wasn’t familiar with the gun, but the hammer was down. Then I saw that the trigger was far forward, and that meant it was double action. I got nervous again. He turned it this way and that in his hands thoughtfully. “You know, Sheriff, for two, maybe three days after Ricky died, I could think of nothing but my own loss. I guess you could say I was feeling sorry for myself. Ricky…I’m sure he felt nothing.” He snapped his fingers. “A fraction of a second, maybe. No more.” He tapped the rim of the steering wheel with the Beretta’s barrel. “But then your people found that bag of cocaine under the seat.” He stopped and shook his head. “For the past few days, I’ve been thinking, Sheriff. That much, it’s worth a lot of money. It’s more than just-what do the kids call it now, a little hit? I mean, somebody is dealing heavy. Maybe not like in L.A. or New York, where they bring it in a ton at a time. I still don’t believe it was my Ricky, but it was in his car…my car. I believe he knew it was there, and ran because of it.”
“Maybe.”
“And I tell you this. I know from when I lived in Phoenix. Once the dealers move in, they move in for all they can take. That cocaine you found was not the last of it. Sometime, those bastards will try again.”
“And you plan to be there with that thing when they do?”
Fernandez made a funny little noise that sounded like an effort to laugh. “People who deal in kilos aren’t Boy Scouts, Sheriff.” We both turned our heads as Bob Torrez’s car turned into the lake road.
“Hang on a minute, Benny.” I walked quickly back to my car and fumbled the radio. A minute later, we saw Torrez turn around and head slowly back down the hill. “I think you can appreciate that what you’re doing makes us all a little nervous, Benny,” I said when I returned. “I mean, this is our job, not yours. You’re not trained for it, you’re too involved to think straight. Now let’s suppose a couple cars pulled in down there by the lake and parked door to door. What would you do?”
Fernandez just stared ahead at the imaginary cars. I continued, “I mean, it’s dark, Benny. Are they just necking? Having a beer? Telling dirty jokes? What? And you’re telling me that you’re going to charge down there with a fifteen-shot semi-automatic pistol at the ready? How are you going to know who they are? Are you going to threaten them and force them all out of their cars and then search them? And if they bring suit against you, you’ll probably lose. And I mean lose more than you can imagine. I don’t know how many civil suits you’ve ever been involved in, but take my word for it, avoid them. And what will you do if they just laugh at you, Benny? Shoot them all? Then you’ve got manslaughter charges against you. And if they’re drug dealers, Benny, what will happen is this. We’ll find what’s left of you lying on the gravel down there the next morning.” I stopped. He was looking down at the gun. “Use your head, Benny. When I came up here, I did it knowing I had backup. I had a light. You don’t even have that. If I hadn’t recognized Yankee Charlie Xray one-three-six, I would have called in the plate and had a bunch of information before I stepped out of the car.” Spouting out his license plate like that made a dent. He looked up at me, a little sorrowfully. “And, Benny, I’ve done this before. I don’t think you have. We don’t want to see you hurt, or anyone else.”
He nodded and offered the Beretta to me, butt first. I shook my head. “That’s not necessary, Benny. Take it back to wherever you bought it tomorrow. For now, just unload it and shove it under the seat. Go home and get some rest. Let us work. Hell, I may be fat and old, but I’m pretty damn good at what I do. The deputies are better still. We’ve got some leads. The sheriff told me today that he’s planning to bring in a specially trained dog. The beast sniffs drugs, believe it or not. Even if you just smoked a single joint as much as forty-eight hours ago, this critter will nail you. We’re going to publicize that, and some people are bound to get nervous. The Drug Enforcement Agency is working with us.” That was a lie, but Fernandez didn’t need to know. “Something’s going to break, believe me. Soon.”
He nodded and sighed heavily. “You just feel so helpless sometimes,” he said.
“Sure.” I groped for something to lighten his spirits a little before sending him down the hill. “And my bet is that when this is all over, it’ll be obvious that Ricky wasn’t involved as anything other than maybe an innocent bystander. You’ll be proud of him.”
“You really believe that?”
“Yup. I know what kind of a home he came from.” Even if I didn’t buy that one, Benny Fernandez did. He looked grateful. I pressed the advantage. “I’ll pull back so you can get out of here, Benny. There’s other things I need to check up here. You go on ahead. Go down and get some rest. Being the midnight vigilante isn’t your style.” He laughed and sounded a little relieved.
“Thanks, Bill. I’ll get rid of this thing tomorrow, first item of business. Sell it back to George Payton.”
“I’m sure he’ll give you back every nickel,” I said.
“A man can be stupid sometimes,” Fernandez said.
It was only in retrospect that Benny’s last line really haunted me. If I had been able to replay that scene, I would have grabbed that Beretta at the first offer. But when I next saw the weapon, it was in a plastic evidence bag.
Chapter 9
Meeting Fernandez had set me on edge. I was as wide-eyed as one of those lemurs you see in picture books about the jungle. Any notion that this night might be one with six or eight hours of sleep was just that…a notion. The road down the hill was empty. The night neckers had gone elsewhere. About five miles north of town, I jogged west on State 78. A housing development of new ranch styles sprawled up the side of the mesa. Most of them had “For Sale” signs in front, and a few looked pretty ragged. The mine and mill closing had caught many developers overbuilding. Maybe drug trafficking was the new industry, I thought as I followed the road up the mesa until it topped out by the airport. With headlights off, I drove along a hundred yards of fencing and passed the airport parking area and an apron access gate for pedestrians. The main gate that led to the hangars was wide open. That was normally the case during the daytime when the airport manager, Jim Bergin, was on the premises. But at midnight or after, it was a little unusual unless some charter flight had just come in.