Interface (51 page)

"There is a nice patch of BLM land that I know about six hours
from here. It's in the basin of the Arkansas River, so it always has plenty of green grass, but unlike a lot of the other land around there
it hasn't been converted to truck farming yet."

"Truck farming . . . that means vegetables and so on?"

"There's a lot of that stuff down there along the Arkansas," Ray
said. "Migrants work there, picking vegetables for shipment to
Oklahoma and Texas."

"Okay. Go on."

"Last year, when the price of beef was low, no one wanted to use
this land and so a number of migrant workers - including the
Ramirezes - went there and parked their trucks and trailers on it
and started living there. Set up a little community. Planted some little gardens and so on. Waiting for the next harvest to come in."

"But last week, a cattleman in that area found that he was
running out of land on which to graze all of these calves that he started when the price of beef got high. And now, in place of the community of migrant workers that used to be on that land, this
man's cattle are there, eating the lush green grass."

"You're saying that the Ramirezes were kicked off the land."

"They and all the other people living there were evicted
yesterday," Ray said. "The closest place for the Ramirez family to stay was Anna's sister's house, here in Denver. So they put the kids
in the back of the truck and came here."

"Oh."

"Hundreds of people are on the road today, all over the High
Plains, because some cattle got hungry," Ray said. "And I wouldn't
be at all surprised if there were several more cases of carbon
monoxide poisoning in the backs of pickup trucks that we haven't
heard about yet."

"If I am a cattleman," Eleanor said, "and I want to use a piece of
BLM land, and some migrant workers happen to be living on it,
then what is the mechanism? How do I make those workers go
away? Call the cops?"

"No you don't call the cops. There are a number of approaches
one could take," Ray said, "but if I had the right connections, my
first choice would be to make a phone call to the Alamo."

Eleanor thought this one over for a minute.

"Ray, if nothing else, you just guaranteed Bianca Ramirez a spot
in the hyperbaric chamber," she said.

Eleanor was right. Dr. Morgan did have a very capable secretary.

She could tell just by looking at the woman that she knew her
business.

"Good morning, my name is Eleanor Richmond and I just got
off the phone from talking to my boss, Senator Marshall," she lied,
"and based on the results of that conversation I think I can promise
you that the single most important thing that your boss Dr. Morgan
will do this whole month, possibly this whole year, will be to have
a conversation with me right now."

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Ray and Dr.
Escobedo grinning at each other. This was like a carnival ride for them.

Dr. Morgan's secretary was cheerful enough about it. If she was pissed off, she was good enough not to show it in front of Eleanor.
She reached Dr. Morgan on his car phone; he was on his way in.

Within fifteen minutes, Dr. Morgan, Eleanor, Ray and Dr.
Escobedo were all sitting around a table in Morgan's office. They made small talk about what kind of additives they wanted in their
coffee and what a nice day it was. Then things got quiet, and
Eleanor found that everyone was looking at her expectantly. She folded her hands in her lap and composed herself for a moment.

"I'm not very good at this sort of thing," she said, "so maybe the best way for me to proceed is just to come out and say something."

"Shoot," Dr. Morgan said.

"This is an exercise in raw political brute force. You will give
Bianca Ramirez treatment in the hyperbaric oxygen chamber or
else the Senator, I'm sure, will make it his mission in life to turn this
medical centre into a smoking hole in the ground."

"Consider it done," Dr. Morgan said cheerfully. "Dr. Escobedo,
you'll make the arrangements to send Bianca over?"

"Yes."

"Excellent," Dr. Morgan said. He seemed pleased and cheerful, as if he woke up every morning of his life and got slapped around
by a U.S. Senator. "Now, is there anything else on the agenda?"

"God," Eleanor said, an hour later, over breakfast with Ray, "I
really overdid it. I'm so embarrassed."

Ray shrugged. Significantly, he didn't try to disagree with her.
"Don't worry about it," he said. "You got what we wanted."

After she had dropped Escobedo off at the county hospital; it had
come to their attention that neither one of them had had any
breakfast. So now they were at a little family place not far from the Alamo. Eleanor was having huevos rancheros. Ray was licking his
lips over a huge steaming bowl of tripe.

"I tend to forget how powerful a senator is," Eleanor said. "I probably could have just made a phone call and gotten the same
result. Instead I came in like Rambo. Used a flame thrower where
I could have flicked a Bic."

"Hey, if nothing else it was great theatre," Ray said. "That's your genius, you know."

"Huh?"

Ray was studying her face interestedly. "You don't know, do
you?" he said. "You just do it on instinct."

"Do what on instinct?"

Ray shook his head flirtatiously. "I don't want to make you self-
conscious and ruin it."

"What are you talking about?"

"I really admire what you did to Earl Strong, you know," he
said, changing the subject none too subtly.

"Yeah, you tell me that every time we see each other."

"Now what we need to do is get that flame thrower aimed at the
right target."

"Aha," she said. "The hidden agenda comes out."

"I told you I was paying for breakfast. What did you think?"

"And an excellent breakfast it is," she mumbled, chewing her
first mouthful. They ate in silence for a minute. Both of them were
ravenous. Emotion burns calories.

"I talked to Jane Osborne," Ray said. "I was all ready to be pissed
at her, but she's nice."

"Here's the part where I ask who Jane Osbourne is."

"She's a forest ranger out in La Junta."

"A forest ranger? In the prairie?"

"Funny, that's exactly what she said when she was assigned
there," Ray said. "She likes forests. She went into the Forest
Service hoping she would end up in one."

"Logical enough."

"She didn't count on the fact that the Forest Service owns a lot
of grassland. Including the piece of land where the Ramirez family was living until yesterday. And they need people to look after that
land. These people are called forest rangers. They wear Smokey
Bear hats and everything. So Jane Osbourne is stuck out there, not
a single tree, much less a forest, for a hundred miles, in this shitty, dead-end GS-12 position, driving around in a pickup truck chasing
dirt bikers and replacing signs that have been shotgun-blasted by
the local intellectuals."

"Must be disappointing."

"Yeah. But it's not as bad as what comes next."

"And what's that?"

"She's about ready to turn in for the evening when she gets a call
from On High and she is ordered to personally evict about a
hundred migrant workers from this patch of grazing land."

"How does a single woman do that?"

"She called in a few other rangers and brought in some federal marshals too, as a show of force."

"Who gave the order?"

"Her boss. Who got it from Denver. And they got it from
Washington. I'm sure."

"Correct me if I'm wrong," Eleanor said, "but I'm sure that this
wasn't the only patch of federal land in Colorado that was housing
squatters."

Ray smiled. "You got that right."

"Have any other such communities been evicted?"

Ray shook his head.

"Just this one," Eleanor said.

"Just this one."

"So this wasn't a blanket order from Washington. It was targeted
at this one piece of land."

"Sure looks that way."

"And why," Eleanor said, "do you suppose that some bureaucrat
in D.C. would suddenly take an interest in this one parcel?"

Ray shrugged. "I can only speculate."

"Please do."

"This bureaucrat probably went to law school with one of
Senator Marshall's aides. Or was his college roommate. Or their kids go to the same day care. Something like that."

Eleanor waggled a finger at Ray. "There you go making
assumptions. How do you know there's a connection to Caleb
Roosevelt Marshall?"

"The piece of land in question adjoins the Lazy Z Ranch," Ray said, "and the cattle grazing on it now all wear the Lazy Z brand."

"Say no more." Eleanor said. "You win."

The Lazy Z ranch was owned by Sam Wyatt. Sam Wyatt was Caleb Roosevelt Marshall's biggest private contributor. And the
president of Senator Marshall's PAC. Sam Wyatt was one of a
dozen or so constituents who could get through to the Senator on
the phone whenever he wanted to.

But in this case, he probably hadn't. This was too much of a dirty
detail for the Senator to mess around with personally. He had
probably just called one of the Senator's aides. He had probably
called Shad Harper, that underaged son of a bitch who had the
office across the hallway from Eleanor's.

Ray was watching her in fascination. "You have this look on
your face like you're plotting an assassination," he joked.

"Something like that," she said.

30

When little Bianca Ramirez was finally released from
Arapahoe Highlands Medical Centre after one week of hyperbaric oxygen treatment, a dozen television crews, four satellite uplink trucks, one Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker,
thirty print reporters, a hundred supportive protesters, the Mayor
of Denver, staffers from all of the local senators' and representatives'
offices, and a few lean and hungry lawyers were waiting for her.
The only question was whether or not her parents, Carlos and
Anna Ramirez, would actually show up to collect her.

Her progress from nameless refugee to media star could be
tracked by checking the headlines on a local newspaper, which had
been sliding in the direction of out-and-out tabloid journalism for
a number of years, and which had been driven completely beyond
the pale by the Bianca Ramirez story.

"TRUCK OF DEATH"

had been the first headline concerning the Ramirez family.
Slightly less hysterical coverage of the tragedy had actually made it
on to a couple of national network newscasts, which was unusual
to say the least; plenty of Chicano kids had suffocated in the backs
of trucks without even being mentioned in the local newspapers.
But this time around, several national Hispanic organisations got
into the act and managed to stir up some interest on a national level.
The case of the Ramirez family was a good one for TV. The truck
of death per se was sitting in a driveway in Denver and anyone could go and videotape it. There had been one survivor, who
happened to be an adorable little girl, and although this didn't get
reported right away, there was, as the saying goes, more to the
story: a failure of responsibility by a major, rich, private hospital, and hints of potential scandal involving one Sam Wyatt, wealthy cattleman, golf partner of senators and CEOs.

"LET HER DIE!"

was the headline on Day 2. The story about Highlands' refusal to treat Bianca had been leaked to the press by Ray del Valle.
Leaked
was a deceptive term. A leak was a tiny seeping crevice. In this case,
blowout
might have been more accurate. Ray made sure everyone
with a minicam, laptop, pen, or pencil knew about the story. More sober journalists just viewed it as another example of "dumping,"
the refusal of some hospitals to treat indigent patients. If they knew their business at all, it was an issue that they had already covered.
Much more melodramatic examples of it happened in other cities.