skeletons (25 page)

Suddenly more sound, and light, glaring light. Overhead a Piper Cub flew a tight circle, and under it a “Nightsun,” a light of 1,500,000 candle power which illuminated an entire city block from an altitude of 500 feet.

Light flushed men from the boulders, sent them legging into the desert and dark.

I stood beside Henry Snackenberg.

A man came up, turned the body over. “Dead. I’m Alvah Helms.” He wore a black tie striped with orange. “Where’s the ranch house?”

Pointed east.

Helms shouted at the men by the cars. “Down the road!” He turned to me. “Let’s go, Butters.”

Couldn’t move.

He took me by an arm, hauled me along. “You can’t stay here alone. Here, get in the car.”

He opened a rear door, pushed me in with a green uniform, got in front with the driver, who wheeled around the Cessna through mesquite.

Helms took a mike from the dash, talked to the Piper circling. “Foxtrot 55, this is Foxtrot 50. We’re going down the road to a house. Show us the way.”

The other sedan followed us, eating our dust, the two cars tearing along in tandem toward the foot of mountains. One minute, two minutes.

Then, around a curve, in the great radial of light from the aircraft. A house. Several long low sheds. And parked by one, a ViaVan. And men running from the sheds in every direction.

We stopped. “Never mind ‘em,” said Helms to the driver and the man beside me. “We’ll round ‘em up later. Right now take the others and go for the house, front and rear. I want everybody in it. And I sure as hell want that sheriff, Chavez.”

The two men slammed out, were joined by those in the rear car, and in the light jogged for the house, rifles and handguns.

Helms had the mike again, flicked a switch on the dash for a different frequency. “Foxtrot 50 to El Paso. Paso? Helms. Now tape me so you get it straight. I want you to talk to HQ Highway Patrol in Albuquerque, Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Arizona, California.

HANK SNACKENBERG WAS DEAD.

“What we’re looking for is moving vans lettered V-i-a-V-a-n. ViaVan, that’s right. Gray and white, tractor, trailer, loaded maybe twenty tons. Now what we want is a tail, nothing else. As soon as anybody anywhere locks in on one, notify us and well take it from there. Get that? Tails only. Then you talk to District in Denver, Chicago, LA. Tell ‘em to tell the ADDI what I’ve just told you and to have units ready to tail as soon as we hear from a highway patrol. Oh, call Customs and have ‘em seal the border at Columbus. Oh yes, and have somebody send an ambulance or a hearse down from Harding here. We lost one. Snack. All right, that’s it.”

ANNIE. ACE.

Alvah Helms snapped the mike into its bracket. A man in his fifties, wearing glasses and a black tie striped with orange. He turned in his seat.

“That does it. On this side of the line anyway. I don’t know how much Snack told you, but this was a big operation. They recruited in Chihuahua and Sonora and probably bussed ‘em to Palomas, south of Columbus, and cut ‘em loose. Then the illegals crossed the line at night just below us here and guided on these mountains and that damned flame back there. I knew it as soon as I saw that damned flame. This is what we call a ‘staging area.’ They bunked in those sheds and waited for transportation north and west. Hell, one of those vans will hold fifty, sixty men. They may have three or four of them on the road all the time. Big money. Took a lot of money to start it. Well, we’ll lock onto the vans and see where they go and who meets ‘em.” He lit a cigarette.

I WAS RESPONSIBLE.

“South of the line’s another matter,” Helms said. “What I want from that house is names and places and records of payments—then with those, the Mexicans can break it up down there. Mostly I want that sheriff, the son of a bitch. You say his name’s Chavez?”

“Pingo Chavez,” I said. “And I’ve got more on him than illegal aliens. Back there by the flame are two bodies in graves I started to open. Both of them writers from New York. Philip Crossworth and Max Sansom. Chavez killed Crossworth four years ago and Sansom about three weeks.”

Helms shook his head. “What a sweetheart. Well, I can’t arrest him, I have no jurisdiction. But I can hold him till the New Mexico Attorney General picks him up. Now if he’s just in that house.” He blew smoke out a window. “Oh yes, thanks, Butters. We appreciate. If we could get co-operation like this from—”

“No thanks,” I said. “If I hadn’t called Hank over here tonight, he’d be alive.”

“If you hadn’t, if you’d come here alone you’d be dead. Chavez is responsible, not you. And all the flag-waving, free-enterprise U.S. businessmen who hire illegals to save a buck. When our own people need work. And the U. S. Congress, which won’t stop it.” He reflected. “Border Patrol doesn’t lose many, but when we do, they’re usually our best. Snack really wanted this one broken—he’d been working on it two years. Now it is.” He stuck his head out of the car to peer at the house. “God I hope Chavez is in there.”

“He isn’t.”

“No?”

“No. I saw him earlier tonight, in Harding. I think I know where he’ll be.”

“Good. As soon as we sweep the house, we’ll move on him.”

“No. I want him myself.”

Helms pulled his head in, looked at me hard. “No way. You can’t afford to take these things personally. Bringing him in is our job. You’re not trained—what if you lose him?”

“I won’t. Look, it’s almost midnight. Give me till morning. If I don’t have him by then, he’s yours.”

“I don’t like it.”

“You owe me something.”

Helms flipped his cigarette. “Why you?”

“I’ve got reasons.”

“Snack?”

“Others.”

“Should we know them?”

“No.”

Alvah Helms slid out of the front seat, stood beside the sedan staring at the house. There were lights in the windows now, but there had been no gunfire. Overhead the Piper Cub continued to circle. Helms stuck his hands in his pockets. He wore a black tie striped with orange. He spoke to me through the window.

“Bueno.
I’ll give you till six in the morning. If you get him, call El Paso. I don’t know where I’ll be but they’ll reach me by radio. If you don’t, call me anyway. Six in the morning.”

Six.

“Are you armed?”

“He lent me an Airweight.”

“Can you use it?”

“I can but I won’t.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I won’t kill.”

“Chavez will.”

Walked back down the sand road to La Casa.

Stopped by Henry Snackenberg’s body. Wanted to cry but didn’t. Men don’t.

WHO WILL TELL YOU, ANNIE?

HOW WILL YOU TELL, ACE?

WHAT WILL YOU DO?

On to the Rolls. A stitch of bullet holes along the left side. SACRILEGE.

But it started. Drove the sand road for the last time, turned onto the highway. Thinking. Of his offer of a relic revolver to Tyler in trade for her virginity. Of his usage of fine men like Charles Vaught and Donald Turnbow and Thomas Word in order to make himself sheriff. Of his extortion. It would require a lot of capital to set up an operation like Los Esqueletos, Helms had said. Of the hundreds, probably thousands, of his own people he had brought illegally into this country to be enslaved, to live under the threat of deportation. Of the killing of Philip Crossworth and Max Sansom, writers. Of my own pain and terror under an automobile. Of the death of Henry Snackenberg, to which he had made me a moral accessory. Of the holes in my cardinal-and-black beauty.

Of the Diego Rivera sketches on his walls.

Two out of three.

I have PINNED TWO MURDERS ON PINGO CHAVEZ and PASSED ON ANYTHING PERTINENT TO THE U. S. BORDER PATROL.

If I haven’t found out WHO TYLER VAUGHT IS, two out of three ain’t bad. And I am not finished.

For you won’t find him, Helms. He has already been alerted to the presence of the Border Patrol. You have tailed me for two days, and were tailed in turn by his cars. He met one of your men in person tonight, at the Ramada. He has means of communication, as you have. He heard about your raid on his operation as soon as it started, within minutes of the moment your aircraft landed near La Casa. His murderous ass is in a sling. He knows you’ll seal the border at Columbus. He knows he’ll have to hide. And there’s a place, one place. He can hide there for a day or two, then come out by night and slither across the line to the large sums he has on deposit in Mexico City. One place. And I must go there by myself, Helms. There are things there no one else should see.

The night had cooled. The stars were crystals. The lopsided moon lay low in the west.

Harding.

Took the circle, parked. Got out, glanced at the clock-face high above, at the hands and numerals. 11:14. This night would never end.

Passed the soldier made of bronze when a car pulled up beside mine, parked. A door slammed. I stepped behind the statue. Someone came up the walk toward me, would have climbed the steps and entered the courthouse had I not intercepted.

“Tyler!”

“Oh! Jimmie!”

“Goddammit I told you to stay with your father!”

“I couldn’t. He fell asleep, and I—”

“This is the pits! You picked the worst possible time to show up here!” I took her by the shoulders, shook her. “Damn you, girl, you’re going back to El Paso, back to the hotel. Wait for me there—I won’t be long. Now get in your car and move it.”

“You’re not my—”

“In that car!”

“No.”

I HIT HER.

It was only a sharp slap to the side of her face with the flat of my hand. Jimmie Butters, abuser of broads.

She reacted like the thoroughbred she was. No tears, no retaliation. “I’ll hate you for that as long as I live,” she said calmly.

“In that car or I’ll beat hell out of you,” I said.

She walked away. I watched her into the rental car, watched the car around the circle and out of sight.

Then climbed the courthouse steps, unbuttoned my jacket, drew the gun from its holster. Opened the door. Entered.

11:14

11:14

11:14

11:14

11:14

11:14

11:14

11:14

11:14

11:14

Dark.

Hush.

Smells. Wills and leather, oaths and ink, appeals and urine.

Past the offices of the county treasurer, tax assessor, clerk and recorder, prosecuting attorney. Mounting the staircase.

At this end of the second floor, the chambers of Judge Charles S. Vaught Jr. And a second staircase.

Climbing, To the iron door. Turning the knob, opening the door.

Into the tower.

Light. Gray unnatural light filtered through old glass. Walls of brick. The wooden cable cage, the dangling cable. On the floor of this chamber, under the column of the cage, a pyramid of flat iron weights, detached. Two flights of iron steps ascending the walls, railed.

“Pingo?”

Resonance.

Smith & Wesson in my hand, I mounted the first flight, step by protracted step. Soundlessly. Pulse and respiration rapid. Eyes straining at the square aperture in the floor above. The entrance to the clock chamber.

The landing.

“Pingo?”

Resonance.

DOES HE HAVE A GUN?

HE DOES NOT KNOW I HAVE A GUN.

Up the second flight, pistol in my right hand pointed at the square. Protracted step by step. Just below the square, below floor level, I knelt, knees cracking.

“Pingo? This is Jimmie Butters.”

Waited.

“Señor Butters.”

That mild, mellifluous voice.

“The party’s over, Pingo. Your damned smuggling thing is smashed.”

“I have heard.”

“They’re looking for you. And listen, I dug up the other two graves. I found them. Crossworth and Sansom. And some bastard of yours killed a Border Patrol man, a really swell guy with a wife and son. And also shot my car full of holes.”

“I am sorry.”

“And not only that, I was up there tonight, where you are, and coming down ran into Judge Vaught. So I know what’s there. I know it all—aliens, murder, extortion. You’ve had it, Pingo.”

“What do you want of me, Mr. Butters?”

He couldn’t see me, I couldn’t see him. I considered. “I want you to kill yourself.”

“Fantastico”

“I mean it. Kill yourself.”

“Why should I do that?”

“Because you’ll die anyway. Executed or in prison, of old age. You deserve to die, Pingo. You’ve even screwed your own people, sold them into slavery in this country. ‘Little Devil’ hell. You must be the biggest son-of-a-bitch-
cucaracha
around.”

“Thank you. But I have no gun.”

“Hang yourself.”

He was considering. “Suppose I kill you?”

“Try it. I’ve got a gun.”

SHOULD NOT HAVE SAID THAT.

“You could not use it.”

“The hell I couldn’t.”

“No. Because I think you are a
joto
. A queer. And a coward. You could not kill a fly.”

RAGE REFLEX. I popped the gun above floor level, pulled the trigger.

BANG.

Dropped my hand, ducked as he fired.

BANG.

BANG.

BANG.

So close that one sang hot by my ear. Ricochets off brick walls and iron steps behind and below me. Couldn’t believe what had happened. That someone had shot at me again, tried to kill me. Worse, that I had fired a weapon in anger because I’d been called a name. Sticks and stones. And I was still angry, might have raised my hand and dared another one had I not remembered: AIRWEIGHT WAS A FIVE-SHOT AND I HAD FIRED IT THREE TIMES AT A CACTUS YESTERDAY AFTERNOON AND ONCE NOW AND HAD ONLY ONE BULLET LEFT OH MY GOD ONE.

“A homo, huh?” My mouth dry. Tongue clacked. “Goddamn you, Pingo. Kill yourself or I will. I know what’s up there. Let the whole goddamned thing die with you.”

“That is your advice.”

“Yes. So your whole life shouldn’t be a total loss. Good men shouldn’t have to pay any longer for what their fathers and grandfathers did. They’ve paid enough.”