"Anything," Vinnie said. "Cars, machine guns, phones, TVs. I can fix shit."
We all looked at Vinnie as if he had just come out of the closet. He shrugged. We drank our drinks and sat quietly. The desert air was clear and the stars were bigger than I was used to. A night bird kept chirping something that sounded like "tuck-a-hoo."
I felt like singing "Home on the Range."
"You hungry?" Sapp asked.
"The drive out was a movable feast," I said. "Why would we be hungry?"
"I made a meatloaf," Sapp said, "and there's some beans."
"Well aren't you the homebody," Hawk said.
"Yeah. Bernie hated my pink apron," Sapp said. "Straight guys are so fucking straight."
"Bernard," Fortunato said.
"There's biscuits, too," Sapp said.
Chapter 37
I was in the Chiricahuas County Sheriff's Department talking with their chief homicide investigator. The room was cinderblock. The windows were tinted. The air-conditioning was high. The metal desk and chairs and file cabinet and small conference table were forest green, perfectly complementing the light green walls. All of it was brightly lit by a bank of overhead fluorescents, which perfectly complemented the sunlight coming in through the windows. The chief investigator's name was Cawley Dark. He was a thin, leathery-looking guy wearing starched blue jeans and snakeskin cowboy boots, a white oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a Glock 9, high on his waist just in front of his right hip. On the forest green metal bookcase behind his desk was a big photograph of three teenaged girls clustering around a blond horse with a white mane.
"Buckman was shot three times," he said. "With a 9-millimeter weapon. We did an autopsy, couldn't match the slugs to anything. Wife says he was threatened by some people from the Dell. We say, `Who?' She says, `I don't know.' We say, `Would you recognize them?' She says, `Certainly.' "
"Pick up anyone from the Dell?" I said.
Dark smiled.
"Everybody we picked up was from the Dell," he said. "It's what we use for a ghetto, out here."
"And?"
"And she says none of them are the guys. She thinks."
"Anybody else look at them?"
"Nope."
"He got shot in the middle of the day on the main street in Potshot and no one saw anything."
"Amazing isn't it," Dark said.
"You have any reason to believe it wasn't the way it's been described?" I said.
"Nothing I know says it didn't happen that way," Dark said.
"But?"
"But nothing I know says it's right." Dark said. "You want coffee?"
"No thanks."
He got up and went to a coffeemaker on top of the file cabinet and poured himself some coffee from a stained pot, and came back and sat down. He took a sip and shuddered.
"Goddamn that's awful," he said.
"Glad I declined;" I said.
"After you called," Dark said, "I checked on you in Boston. Got booted around a little. Ended up talking to a state guy named Healy."
"One of my biggest fans," I said.
Dark made a wobbling metz metz gesture with his right hand.
"What do you think about Potshot?" he said.
"A mess," I said. "What do you think of the police chief down there?"
"Walker? Odd duck. I don't know how good he is but he's better than anyone else. The last two quit and left the area."
"Always been a small force?"
"No," Dark said. "For awhile they had an actual police force. Then one of them got killed. And most of the rest sort of dropped out and went away, one at a time."
"Who killed him?"
"Probably the Dell, but we have no evidence."
"Why don't you roust them out of there anyway?" I said.
Dark grinned.
"I'm just a homicide cop," he said. "That's SWAT team stuff."
"And why doesn't the SWAT team do it?"
"Got no legal basis for it for one thing," he said. "Far as we can prove, nobody in the Dell has committed an indictable offense. And, just to complicate things, The Preacher claims that the Dell is a religious organization and any effort to control them is an abridgement of their religious freedom."
"And no one wants to get into another Waco situation," I said.
"You bet," Dark said.
"So you think Walker is in the bag?" I said.
"With the Dell? He's survived in a job that no one seems able to keep."
"You feel the others were run off by the Dell?"
"That's what I figure," Dark said.
"And you can't prove it?"
"Nope. Even talked to one of the previous police chiefs, fella named Mizell. He wasn't talking about anything. But he seemed to be living comfortable."
"You think they bribed him?"
"I had to guess," Dark said, "I think they did both. They told him if he stuck around they'd kill him, so he left. But to keep him quiet, they gave him a separation bonus."
"But Walker has stayed," I said.
"Yep. He's either tougher than a rabid skunk," Dark said. "Or…"
"Or they like him just the way he is," I said. "Maybe they figured they couldn't keep running these guys off without one of them deciding to testify. They're paying them off anyway, so they got a guy they didn't need to run off, and paid him to stay and keep his mouth shut," Dark said.
"Or maybe he's just stubborn," I said.
"I'd be more likely to believe that if he was dead."
"Cynical," I said.
"Probably. You alone?"
"No, I have a few friends with me," I said.
"According to Healy you can't help yourself. You'll annoy The Preacher enough so sooner or later he'll take a run at you."
"Guys just like to have fun," I said.
"Well if they kill you, try and get them to leave clues around," Dark said. "I'd love to bust everybody down there."
Chapter 38
IT WAS TIME to confer with our employers, and, since we were hoping to keep our profile low, we invited them to our place.
It was a still, hot morning. In the scrub above our house some kind of desert bird was making a raspy sound appropriate to the desert.
Lou Buckman was the first to arrive. She pulled up in front of our house in a stripped-down yellow jeep with no top and no doors. She got out of the jeep wearing a big hat and riding clothes. A single blond braid showed below the hat, and her makeup worked beautifully with her face. Her eyes were very big and the color of morning glories. We were arrayed in a friendly manner, on the front porch, and if she found us daunting, she didn't show it.
"Good morning," she said.
"Good morning."
I introduced her to the other men.
Bernard J. Fortunato said, "I got coffee. You want some?"
"Yes, thank you," Lou said. "That would be lovely."
Bernard hustled off as if he were going for the Holy Grail. Lou stood on the porch and looked at us.
"There aren't very many of you," she said.
"But what there is is cherce," Hawk said.
"Cherce?"
"Choice," I said. "It's a line Spencer Tracy used about Katherine Hepburn."
"Oh."
Lou still looked at us.
"You do look dangerous," she said.
"Senorita," Chollo said, "that is because, as we say in my country, we are dangerous."
"What is your country?" Lou said.
Chollo grinned at her.
"Los Angeles," he said.
Lou leaned her admirable little butt on the railing of the porch. Bernard came back and gave her coffee. She thanked him and held the mug in both hands and sipped. Behind her a Ford Expedition pulled into the yard and a Dodge Van, and a big Chrysler Sedan. Our employers got out, warily, as if it might be an ambush, and gathered uneasily in front of the porch. J. George was there on the left looking prosperous and affable.
In fact, all four of them looked prosperous, and they bore with them the aroma of self-satisfaction that prosperity brings. The mayor stood next to J. George, then Barnes the lawyer and Brown the banker. I stood beside Lou Buckman on the top step of the porch facing them. My posse was ranged along the back wall of the porch, seated, most of them teetering their chairs back so that the front legs cleared the floor.