Strike Dog (28 page)

36

BABOQUIVARI WELLS, ARIZONA
JULY 23, 2004

Grady Service found the gate unlocked, lifted it, drove through, got out of his rental, and closed the gate behind him. He wiped the dust off his sweaty forehead, took a long pull from a $5.00 bottle of water, and lit a cigarette. The thermometer in the rental car said 108. The ground through his shoes felt fifty degrees hotter. His shirt and trousers were soaked with sweat and stuck to him, and he was tired from traveling. He had spent the previous day on commercial flights, Marquette to Green Bay to Minneapolis, where he had spent the night sleeping in an airport lounge, and this morning from Minneapolis to Phoenix to Tucson, where he rented the vehicle.

He had not asked for approval of the trip from his captain, and had not told Special Agent Tatie Monica he was leaving town.

Another call from Shamekia had put him on the move. “Grady, I've found another source for you. His name is Eduardo Perez. He was with the
federales
during the Ney investigation. He's since moved to the States and become a U.S. citizen. He works for the Border Patrol as an undercover agent, moving back and forth across the border in the Sonoran Desert. It was a fluke that I found him. He's due to go undercover again in three days, but if you can get down to Arizona, he'll talk to you. I get the feeling he is not all that anxious to talk about the Ney case.” She gave him instructions for finding the place, which was near Fresnal Canyon in the south central Baboquivari Mountains, about eighty miles southwest of Tucson.

He had quickly weighed his options and decided to go. There was no time to touch base with anyone, and as he and Tree had learned in the marines, it was often easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

A rough sand road led from a macadam state highway toward Fresnal Canyon to the east; eight miles after the turnoff he found the gate on the south side of the powdery dirt road.

He finished his cigarette, mashed the butt into the ground, got in, and drove another nine miles south to where the road ended. There was a World War II jeep parked near a stand of saguaro cacti, which cast almost human shadows.

The colors of the landscape ranged from black to orange and ochre. He got out and walked over to the jeep. There were no prints. Around him there were creosote bushes, and more saguaros, these with multiple bullet holes, and several stunted Joshua trees.

The ground was caliche, baked sand that seemed to absorb and radiate the sun. Service sat with his legs out of the car, kicked off his shoes, and switched to his boots. He got his pack, water supply, his compass, and started walking. To the northeast he saw a shimmering line of mountains and in the middle, a peak that looked like a large white nipple. Immediately ahead of him there was a small rise with pale yellow boulders and between two of them, what appeared to be a game trail. What sort of animals could endure such heat? On a rock near the boulders he saw the tail of a snake flick as it escaped into the shadows of a small crevice. The game trail continued eastward and, reaching the crest of the second steep hill, he looked down into a valley with hundreds of saguaro.

The trail led into the middle of the giant plants, where he saw a structure of crude slats with a flat thatched roof. The slats looked like gray bones; the structure was vaguely reminiscent of a rib cage. A man sat cross-legged on a blanket in the shade of the shelter and looked up at him.

Service batted dust off his clothes.

The man was thin, with a reddish-mahogany complexion, smooth skin, and ragged black salt-and-pepper hair. He looked freshly shaved.

“Perez?” he greeted the man. “Service.”

The man looked up, pointed to a blanket across a small cook fire. There was a pot hanging over the fire, which made almost no smoke. The man lifted the red earthenware vessel beside him and poured its contents into clay mugs.

“You got your bona fides?” the man asked in a sonorous voice.

Service showed his state badge and ID. “You?”

The man took a gold shield out of his pocket and hung it around his neck. It read
cbp border patrol, patrol agent perez
.

Service wanted to start asking questions, but decided they needed to sit for a few minutes, get used to each other. The worst thing you could do with a reluctant interviewee was to push too hard too soon, especially when the heat was beyond belief. “Been with the border patrol long?”

“Drink,” the man said. He had delicate hands and moved slowly.

Service sipped the reddish liquid. It was slightly sweet, slightly fermented. “Ten years,” the man said. “This is called
nuwait
. You?”

“Twenty plus,” Service said. “You talked to Shamekia?”

“Yes, the lady lawyer from Detroit with the impossible last name. She said you want to talk about the Ney case.”

“Affirmative. She also said you seemed reluctant.”

The man smiled. “Occupational lockjaw. This job, it sometimes pulls our lips tight, yes? Too much time alone, perhaps.”

Service understood.

The man said. “Silence is often a better weapon than a gun.”

Perez had no accent. “You were with the Mexican Federal Police.”

“Yes. I grew up in Nogales. My father was a judge. I came to the States for college, law enforcement administration at Arizona State in Tempe. After I graduated I went home. My father was a wise and moral man who hoped that U.S.-style training for
federales
would lead to a less corrupt, more effective force, but what difference can one man make?” the man said with a shrug. “I spent three years on the Yucatán and rose to the rank of special inspector. This earned me a transfer to the north and a unit called Special Crimes, those involving foreign nationals.”

“That's how you got on to Ney.”

“I was visiting my parents in Nogales when Ney was detained in Juárez. It was I who picked out the detail of the Cadillac and convinced my superior to take the team there to investigate. The locals, of course, resisted, but the boss called in authority from above and we took custody of the suspect.”

“Ney never talked,” Service said.

“He talked quite a lot and he was pleasant, but he never admitted to the crime. All he would say was that his work was complete.”

“Meaning?”

Perez shrugged and held out his hands. “We had no idea, but he was convicted and sentenced to die.”

“And killed while in custody.'

“Not in the way you may think. He convinced a guard at the prison to kill him, in exchange for ten thousand U.S. dollars, for which he provided a letter of credit at a bank in the Cayman Islands. When the guard contacted the bank, they denied his letter.”

“Ney was dead by then.”

“Of course. To a naive, simple man, ten thousand American dollars is a treasure. There was a great deal of anger over the death. The FBI sent a scathing and critical letter to the head of our national police, but there was nothing to be done. Ney was dead, the case finished. We tried to clean up the aftermath, did an autopsy, and punished the guard, who admitted his foolishness.”

“An autopsy?”

“The rules are the same there as here for any violent or unexpected death. The pathologist found the man filled with cancer, which had metastasized. He had only weeks or months to live, and the death would certainly have been agonizing. The care in our prisons was less than humane. Faced with such an end, any man might consider a similar solution.”

“But you could not positively identify him.”

“It was the FBI who had that responsibility and no, they failed.”

“The reports said a woman and a boy were with him.”

“Indeed, when he was stopped in Juárez, but of course he was stopped there because the locals wished only
mordida,
you understand?” Perez rubbed his fingers together. “The man resisted and they arrested him. They let the woman and the boy go before we arrived. We never saw them.”

Service tried to process the information, which didn't seem to amount to much.

“I have told you what I know,” Perez said. “May I ask your interest?”

Service explained about the murders of game wardens, and the blood eagle MO. “We thought that the man might have tested the method. Shamekia found the Ney cases in Mexico. Interestingly, a game warden was killed in New Mexico about ten days after Ney was arrested.”

“I see,” Perez said. “But of course, this Ney could not have killed the man in New Mexico.”

“I realize that,” Service said.

“Was this killing in New Mexico one of mutilation?” Perez asked.

“No, the man there was strangled.”

“Do you have other questions for me?”

“Not right now.”

Perez got two bowls from a soft pack beside him and scooped something from the pot over the fire. “Mesquite beans, barley, corn, cholla buds, and hot peppers,” he said. “The peppers heat you inside to reduce the difference with the heat outside.”

The soup was thick and distinctive. Nantz and Walter would have loved it.

When their soup was gone the man gave him a pancake-like thing, which had been sitting on a rock in the sun. Onto this he poured a viscous orange substance. “I don't know the name of this food in English,” he said. “It is something I have made and enjoyed since I was a child. The syrup is taken from the fruit of the saguaro.”

The syrup was a vague blend of fig and strawberry flavors, sweet but not overpowering.

“You are here at a propitious time,” Perez said. “The saguaro are giving us their fruit and my people are making foods from them, including the wine.”

The man took another pull on his wine and refilled his glass. “The idea is to fill our bodies with wine so that God will fill the earth with rain and everything that depends on it can live another year.”

“Your people?” Service asked, taking another drink of wine.

“Tohono O'odham—Papagos,” the man said. “Desert People. We are among the few native tribes to never have been removed from our reservations. Long ago the Apache were our traditional enemies and we helped the American army bring Geronimo to justice.”

Service was confused. “I thought you were Mexican.”

“We were once called Pima, and we lived on both sides of the line which divided Mexico from America under the Gadsden Purchase. In Mexico they call us
Frijolero
—bean people. Traditionally we have lived among ourselves in the Sonora, but my father was unique. He was educated in Mexico City, Spain, and the United States. Being a
Frijolero
among
federales
was a position of low odds. I decided to come to America. Now I am employed to look for and interdict coyotes; you understand?”

Coyotes were illegal immigrants. Service nodded.

“I spend weeks alone in the field and return to my home in Tucson from time to time. Before I go back into the field, I come here to harden myself for life the old way and to readjust to the air, the heat, and the hardships of the caliche. My people have never mixed well with whites, and the Sonora is a prime area for coyotes, so I can move among them freely and not arouse suspicion.”

The solitude of the man's job reminded Service of his own.

“When I was first hired, the Border Service believed that my people were involved in coyote trafficking. I knew this to be untrue, so I agreed to take the position. It is well established now that their premise was wrong. I never thought I would come to love such a way of life, but I have. I am ­happiest here, alone, and dependent solely upon myself. I have friends who are game wardens. We live a similar life, you and I.”

Service nodded.

“This man, Ney. I talked to him many times. He was a pleasant and gentle fellow.”

“And a killer.”

Perez shrugged. “Perhaps.”

“You think he was innocent?”

“The man is dead. We will never know.”

“But you suspect something.”

“It is only that he repeatedly asked only about his son. He showed no interest in the woman.”

“He called him his son?”

“Yes, but never by name. Always it was ‘my boy, my creation.'”

“My
creation?
” Odd.

“Yes, his exact words.”

“And the woman?”

“He never mentioned her, never once inquired about her fate.”

“Maybe she wasn't his wife,” Service said.

“I would agree with that,” Perez said, refilling their mugs. “Take off your shoes, my friend.”

Service stared at the man. “Why?”

“I will show you something special.”

Service took off his shoes and socks and wiggled his toes. There was no breeze, but the thatched roof gave shade and made the temperature almost manageable.

Perez went off into the rocks and came back with a bowl of red powder, which he mixed with water until it was a deep vermillion paste. He handed the bowl to Service. “Paint the bottom of your feet with this.”