The Milagro Beanfield War (65 page)

“Halversson, shmalversson. What about that other guy, the lawyer works for the
Voice?”

“The
Voice
folded. Has anybody run into him up there?”

“Not so far as I know.”

“Maybe somebody better talk with him. Or at least put a man on him,” Kyril Montana said, more to himself than to Gil. But how could you talk to Bloom without arousing his suspicion and drawing a surefire story that might appear somewhere sometime?

“Okay, Gil. Yeah, you better tell Trucho to put a guy on Bloom, or at least keep half an eye on his place. Thanks for calling.”

“Sure, pal. See you up there, maybe.…”

Immediately on hanging up, Kyril Montana began to move. He fetched a rifle from a polished walnut gun case that he had made when still in high school, and from a locked drawer at the bottom of this case he removed the bolt for the rifle, which he fitted into the gun. He also retrieved from the drawer a black plastic case containing the rifle's scope, a box of high-powered shells, and a .357-magnum pistol in a hip holster. He set this equipment on his desk and lifted his binoculars from off a peg beside the gun case. Then he went through the kitchen to a utility room, located a padded canvas gun-carrying case in a jumbled corner, and, back in the den again, he fitted the rifle, the scope box, the magnum, and the shells in the bag and zipped it up. After that he carried the equipment back through the kitchen and utility room, placed everything in the trunk of his car, locked the trunk, and started the car, letting it idle as he returned inside.

Marilyn was watching TV. Briefly, he outlined what had happened; she accepted the news quietly. While he was upstairs changing into a flannel shirt, khakis, tennis socks, and tan leather hiking boots, she fixed black coffee in a thermos and some chicken salad sandwiches. With the sandwiches in a sack and the thermos under his arm, and having kissed her good-bye with a promise to call once he had gotten up there, the agent snagged a goosedown ski parka off a hook in the utility room, and he was seated behind the wheel ready to back clear of the garage when suddenly he remembered he had forgotten the pack.

It was a lightweight nylon-frame job, and all the necessities, from toilet paper to a flashlight and matches, extra socks, a plastic see-through poncho, and a lightweight sleeping bag were already in it. There was a pocket for fishline and flies; another pocket jammed tight with first aid equipment, a snakebite kit, a small whetstone, and other necessities of outdoor life. The agent added some dehydrated foodstuff packets, an aluminum mess kit, kissed Marilyn again, and left.

On the empty highway going north, he reviewed all the available information in the case and all the moves he had made, analyzing what had been done, where the weak links were, where the possible conduits of exposure were located, what the implications and possible consequences of Joe Mondragón's actions were, not only for Joe, but for himself, Kyril Montana, and for the state police. He went over in his mind the people who were familiar with all or even bits and pieces of his own and his office's actions up to this point, and composed a mental list of those few men who might possibly cause trouble. There was nobody in the capital, but in Milagro, although he felt certain of Lavadie, Bud Gleason, and Nick Rael, he wondered about the sheriff, Bernabé Montoya. And that stupid mayor, Sammy Cantú, could blunder into trouble. He probably ought to speak with Cantú, then, going over the facts so that the mayor would understand this incident was spontaneous,
not planned
—Pacheco had acted on his own. And, because the shooting was unpremeditated, they were all off the hook, so long as they kept their mouths shut.

Gliding down a hill into the small settlement of Arroyo Verde, Kyril Montana made a note to arrange a meeting with the governor and Bookman and Noyes, in order to explain what had happened. For as quickly as possible, now that they apparently had the goods on Joe Mondragón, whatever undercover provocateur groundwork had been laid and developed regarding him and his beanfield had to be erased; any and all confusion among those who had some knowledge about what had been afoot had to be dispelled.

At a Lota Burger stand the agent ordered coffee to go. On the road again, beyond the town's last streetlight, he sipped the coffee and quit thinking about the various ramifications for a while. The radio crackled intermittently, he paid no attention; if his personal call number, or a ten-code related to the shooting, came up, he would automatically tune in. In the meantime he guided his powerful car along the highway, driving fast, over seventy, up toward Milagro.

For thirty miles there were no towns. The moon was partially hidden behind ragged summer thunderheads, but the agent could still see the surrounding landscape. On one side flat sagebrush plains trailed off into soft round foothills that led into mountains beyond. To the west, passing a lumber mill teepee burner whose tip glowed red, was an orchard valley along the Rio Grande. At one brief point where the road was slick from a local cloudburst he could smell a combination of fruit trees and heavy sage. Then the road suddenly started winding as it entered the river gorge.

Kyril Montana slowed down to fifty-five. For a half-hour, in the gorge darkness, no other cars came at him. When the moon emerged from behind thunderhead darkness the river gleamed. No guard railings lined the road, and in spots where rain had fallen the road was slippery and treacherous; small rocks that had oozed loose from the cliffsides and scattered across the road forced him to brake down even further. Toward the end he climbed sharply for about ten minutes, past a deserted motel and a few ghostly cottonwood groves where dwellings lay, rising finally to the 7000-foot-high plateau he would follow all the way to Milagro.

It was a lovely sensation, one the agent had always appreciated, catapulting from the twisty dark gorge onto that flatland, with a straight highway aiming exactly north. The treeless panorama ahead was among the most breathtaking sights in the state, even on a darkish night like this. To the left, across gently sloping sageland, the gorge opened for a startling instant. To the right stretched the Midnight Mountains, snowcapped for all but a few summer months and boasting the highest mountain in the state, 13,180-foot Hija Negrita, in the shadow of which lay—scattered like stars in the dark plain—Chamisaville's twinkling lights.

The car tires thrummed over a cattleguard and Kyril Montana stepped on the gas. From some roadside carrion an owl, huge and dark, its large yellow eyes glinting briefly in the headlight beams, took off, flying directly into the car's path. The agent neither lifted his foot off the gas, nor swerved, as—with a staggering wing-flapping whoosh—the bird swooped across the windshield and over the roof, missing death by inches. In another wet area a few miles closer to Chamisaville, tiny toads gallantly hopped across the road. Farther on the car whizzed past or over some kangaroo rats. To the west lightning flickered in sheets broken by jagged streaks. And, bound for El Paso, a Trailways bus boomed by.

Two miles outside Chamisaville the agent stopped at the state police bungalow. Although lights burned inside, the doors were locked. He had a passkey, entered, and called ahead to Doña Luz.

“Pacheco's still alive,” an operator whom he did not know informed him. “In fact, they think already his condition is improving. Apparently he's a tough old fart.”

“Where's Trucho?” the agent wanted to know.

“He's still up in Milagro chewing fingernails. Him and Bruno Martínez and Bill Koontz. Sal Bugbee, too. I guess they're still talking with the people. Things are pretty quiet up there. They got a posse organized to go out tomorrow around dawn.”

The agent signed off and checked the gas pump outside, but it was locked and he didn't have a key, so five minutes later he pulled into a station on the northern outskirts of Chamisaville, filling up the tank on his credit card.

After that he kept his mind fairly blank over the eighteen miles to Doña Luz. It hailed for a minute, then the sky was empty and luminescent; clumps of sagebrush along the roadside glowed like torches. But soon lightning began flickering again off to the west while mist drifted from the close eastern mountain canyons toward the road. He passed a group of big, gaunt, slope-faced horses walking dumbly in a line along the shoulder—Indian horses, the agent guessed instinctively—and after that he crossed the Rio Colorado into Doña Luz.

One state police car and one county car were parked outside the small headquarters building. Inside three men sat around drinking coffee and chewing the fat—the radio operator with whom Kyril Montana had spoken, a handsome young kid by the name of Emilio Cisneros; the jovial gray-haired county sheriff, Ernie Maestas; and a crew-cut state higway patrolman the agent knew, though not well, Bill Koontz.

“That José Mondragón, that little son of a bitch,” Ernie Maestas laughed. “I knew that bastard was gonna kill somebody someday. You know what he did to me once? I had him in the isolation tank, county jail, maybe three years, two—ahhh, I don't remember—a while ago, anyway. Johnny Roop brought him in, remember Johnny Roop?”

“Didn't he shoot himself dicking around with somebody else's gun in the jail a couple years ago?”

“Horseplay,” Maestas chuckled. “He grabbed Pete Lujan's gun out of Pete's holster and somehow shot himself in the stomach, and the assistant DA—that chingón Robertson—he called it an accidental death due to ‘horseplay.'”

“Who's got a full report on the Pacheco thing?” Kyril Montana asked impatiently. “Did anybody make out a report yet?”

“Who's gonna call Tina and ask her to type out a report at 1:00
A.M
.?” Koontz joked dryly.

“Type it,” Maestas laughed. “Fuck it, who's gonna
write
it at 1:00
A.M
.?”

“Well, let me see the preliminary folder at least,” the agent said wearily as Ernie Maestas chortled on about Joe Mondragón.

“Like I said, we had him in the pit. I don't remember what for. I think he went after some drunken bastard with a timing chain, who the hell remembers? But anyway, he asked me for a blanket, said his nuts were cold, I told him to suck his dick to keep warm. So you know what that feisty little rat did—?”

Annoyed—though his features remained impassive—Kyril Montana leafed hastily through some scribbled sheets in the Pacheco–Mondragón folder, but came across no new information.

“He took his pants off, stuck them in the crapper, and started flushing like a madman. He had the whole cell plus half the county jail flooded before we could turn off the water—”

“How come all the downstate cheese is crawling around up here?” Koontz asked, offering Kyril Montana a cigarette the agent refused.

“We get out of touch down there,” the agent joked humorlessly, heading for the door. “Every now and then Mr. Trucho likes us to participate in something like this just to keep our hands in.”

“Yeah, God forbid you should ever get out of touch with us poor Chicanos up here,” Ernie Maestas laughed, slapping the agent's shoulder as he went by. “You got to hunt down a cabrón from the norte every now and then just to test how good you are, verdad? The gabachos down south, they don't know assault and murder from a hole in the ground, qué no? Going after them is like shooting patitos in a pinball gallery, right? But up here things are different—”

Kyril Montana closed the door gently, backed his car around, pulled onto the highway again, and ran the last thirteen miles up to Milagro in less than ten minutes. A mile below town he stopped at a one-car block manned by the two Chamisaville state personnel, Loren McKay and Buddy Namath, who added nothing to the plethora of noninformation he already had.

Then, instead of stopping immediately in Milagro, the agent drove north to the other block, manned by a county undersheriff and another state cop, Sal Bugbee, who also had nothing else to report.

With that he turned around and drove to Bud Gleason's house.

*   *   *

When Joe Mondragón shot Seferino Pacheco, Charley Bloom practically jumped for joy.
Saved!
he cried to himself when nobody was around. He would defend Joe on an assault or a manslaughter charge, and in the process the beanfield would be forgotten. It was what everybody wanted—qué no? He almost wished he had the guts to tell Bernabé Montoya, or the Doña Luz state cops, or the county sheriff, Ernie Maestas, to set an excessively high bail so that Joe would cool his heels out of action while the beanfield went to hell.

But after that first sensation of relief, the bottom fell out. He despised his gutless reaction to Joe's dilemma; he couldn't stand his cowardice. And he knew, too, there was no way that beanfield could go to hell; Joe or no Joe it would flourish, maybe now even more than before.

Whereupon, like a man doomed, he called up Bernabé Montoya. “Bernie? Charley here. Charley Bloom. Listen, I don't know the extent of what Joe's done, I don't even know if he did anything, and I don't know where he's hiding
if
he's hiding. But I want you to understand I'm his lawyer, and he has certain rights I'm sure you're familiar with. And if you and your deputies go after him like a pack of crazy wild dogs and shoot him down in cold blood or even manhandle him a
little,
I'm telling you right now I'll do everything I can to hang the lot of you from the rafters by your balls, if I have to go all the way to the Supreme Court to do it, understand? I don't know how you're going to handle it, but you better make damn sure you haven't got some trigger-happy boob in your posse, if that's what you're planning to form. If Joe shot Pacheco, he did it in self-defense, the way I understand it, and if he doesn't come out of the hills alive and in good shape, I'm going to hold you personally responsible, and, like I said, I'll try to have the book thrown at you, I'll make damn sure you get hit with everything including the kitchen sink.”