“First thing to do is get acquainted with the boot heel section of New Mexico,” Henry had said. “And while you’re doing that, see if you’re smart enough to find the Hoe-ches Highway.”
That was the Border Patrol’s jocular title for the footpaths used by illegals in filtering across from Mexico, and all Henry told her about it was that it was somewhere between San Luis Pass in the Aninias Mountains and the Alamo Huecos and was named after the Ho Che Min trail of Viet Cong fame. Since 81 ran between the two ranges, and since illegals needed to get to some sort of road to be picked up and hauled to sanctuary, Bernie was pretty sure she could find these pathways. In fact, Henry’s remark had rankled, even though he was smiling at her when he said it. And it still rankled.
Her pager summoned. She extracted the phone and turned it on, wondering why she wasn’t being contacted by the radio. She had an exciting, but momentary and illogical, thought that it might be Jim Chee calling. He’d had time to get the letter she’d sent him. But he wouldn’t know her pager number. It would be some confidential stuff, maybe. Henry had warned her about dopers eavesdropping on their calls.
“Officer Manuelito,” she said, still hoping.
“This is Ed Henry. Where are you?”
Bernie exhaled. “On I-10. Almost to Hatchita.”
“Do a U across the divider and get on back here to the office. Some things I forgot to talk to you about.”
“Oh?”
“About signs to spot. Evidence. What to take pictures of. Did you take any last week? If you did, bring ’em along. I need to see how you’re doing.”
Bringing along the pictures was no problem. The half of them she hadn’t put in the envelope with the letter to Jim were still in the two-for-the-price-of-one Walgreen’s photos sack, along with the roll of negatives. Not the sort of stuff you’d shoot for a contest, Bernie thought, as she flipped through them, but the oryx showed up well in the telephoto picture. Beautiful animal, she thought. Why would anyone consider killing one of them a sport?
* * *
Ed Henry gave the oryx hardly a glance. He spent more time studying, and criticizing, portraits on tire treads, broken-down thistles, snapped stems, footprints, and the like, and then went back to her pictures at the building site.
“Why did you go in there? No Trespassing sign and all?”
Bernie explained it. First thinking the truck she’d noticed would lead her back to the highway, then being curious about the Mexican license plate, and what it was doing out in that empty landscape. Being allowed entry, and finding that the truck was part of a watering place construction project.
Henry nodded, finding it sensible.
“I don’t think I told you about the Tuttle Ranch,” he said, looking up from the photos. “Probably not. It’s sort of a private arrangement.”
Bernie shook her head.
“Well, the deal is like this. The Tuttle people are sort of subrosa partners of ours. They keep their eye out for the illegals, mules, stuff we’d like to know. Those watering places they have for the game animals attract the Mexicans too. The Tuttle people watch for them and tip us off. Things like that. All quiet because there are some people in the smuggling trade who wouldn’t like that. Might react. You know what I mean?”
All through this account, Henry’s eyes had been studying her.
“React?”
Henry nodded. “Get mean. Cut fences. Shoot those expensive African animals. Maybe shoot a Tuttle cowboy.”
“You mean the illegals?”
“I mean those smuggling contractors. The coyotes. Take their money, slip ’em over the border, and dump ’em off. And maybe bring in a few sacks of cocaine on the side.”
Bernie nodded again. “Yeah, the man who let me in said they’d had some vandalism.”
“The bottom line to all this is the Tuttle people help us and in return we don’t bother them. Some of the high-society Mexican big shots like to come in for some big-game hunting. We don’t bother them about visas. Anything like that. And we don’t go barging in there to pick up illegals. Just let them know. They sort of arrest them for us and we go haul them into jail.”
“I didn’t know anything about any of this,” Bernie said.
Henry smiled at her. “Well, now you do. My fault anyway. Should have done my job and filled you in on all these little side issues.” He shuffled through the photographs and extracted a close-up Bernie had taken of a tire tread.
“Why’d you take this one?”
“It looked unusual.”
“It is,” Henry said. “It’s what we used to call a ‘recap.’ You take a worn-out tire and salvage it by replacing the original tread with new rubber. Sort of melting it on. Not done here anymore. Or not much. But they still do it some places in Mexico.”
“It looks like it has a sort of a tread,” Bernie said.
“They press that into the rubber when it’s soft. And the point is we’ve been seeing this odd-looking tire mark for several years now. We intercept a drug shipment, or a busload of illegals, and there it is.”
“But you’ve never caught the driver?”
“Nope. Had a witness or two who think they saw the pickup. An old blue Ford 150, they think it was. Say they see it somewhere near where the action was. Driving by, driving away, parked, or something. Driver supposed to be a skinny man. Oldish.”
“So if I see the truck that’s leaving these tracks, I stop him?”
“No. Call it in and keep it in sight. Could be dangerous,” Henry said. “Or most likely, nothing at all. Just coincidence.” Henry gathered the prints and the negative roll into a pile, opened his desk drawer, swept it in, and shut the drawer. He gave Bernie a challenging look.
“This all of them?”
“Some of them I dumped,” Bernie said. “Out of focus, or the film fogged or something.”
A moment of silence. Henry looked doubtful.
“But those would be on the negatives, wouldn’t they?”
“Sure,” Bernie said, wondering what this was about.
“Now I need one more picture,” Henry said. He opened the drawer again, extracted a pocket-sized camera, and made sure it was loaded. “Need one of you.”
And what was this about? Her expression must have asked that question.
“I’ll send it out to the Tuttle people so they’ll know you,” Henry said. “So they’ll know you’re a legitimate Customs Service Agent.”
That stung a little. “Don’t I look like one. Uniform, badge, all that.”
“You didn’t mention the jewelry,” Henry said. “You’re out of uniform and now I have photographic evidence to prove it if I ever need to fire you. I mean wearing that little silver fellow on your lapel. Looks like you’re going to a party or something. That stickpin’s pretty but it’s not allowed when you’re on duty.”
Bernie touched the stickpin—an inch-long but skinny replica of a Navajo yei her clan called Big Thunder. Her mother’s brother had given it to her at her kinaalda ceremony when the family had gathered to celebrate her new womanhood. “He will look after you,” Hostiin Yellow had told her. “Have him with you any time you need help.”
“I didn’t know about that regulation,” Bernie said. “The pin’s a family thing. I just wear it for luck.”
“Just have your luck off duty then,” Henry said.
11
“Let’s go over this again,” Captain Largo said. “As I understand it, you want me to send you down to the Mexican border for a couple of days or so, so you can get yourself involved in a U.S. Customs Service situation, because maybe it’s connected to an FBI case in which you’re not supposed to be involved anyway. Is that what you’re asking?”