“I’m familiar with Mayor Brown.”
“A man came to Marian’s house this morning. A hard-looking man with lots of tattoos. Maria called him a cabrón. He went into Marian’s office to talk with her. Maria said they began to argue, raise their voices so that she could hear them. At one point Marian shouted, ‘Kill him. Just kill him.’ ”
“Kill who?”
“Maria didn’t hear. She was scared. She moved to another part of the house so they wouldn’t know she’d been listening.”
“Why didn’t she go to the police?”
But as soon as I said it, I knew the answer. The same reason someone who was Ojibwe wouldn’t go to the police in Minnesota. A history of harassment. A history of distrust.
“I’ve known Marian all my life, and I hate to say this, but I believe there’s not a compassionate bone in her body.” Michelle was quiet a moment. “Ah, hell. The truth is, she’s a ruthless bitch, and I wouldn’t put it past her to be involved in something as coldhearted as murder.”
I turned around and stared at the dark real estate office, wondering where Brown and Sanchez had gone.
“Why are you telling me this?” I said.
She laughed, but it was more in disbelief than in humor. “Are you kidding? Ever since you arrived here you’ve been like a lightning rod. If it’s not you, I thought it might be someone you’ve talked to. I don’t know what any of this is about, but if you ended up vulture food and I hadn’t said anything, I wouldn’t be able to sleep nights. You be careful, Cork.”
“Still praying for me?”
“My knees are callused.”
I walked back to the cantina. Sylvester was alone at the bar, watching another ball game, drinking his beer. I took the stool next to him.
“Your former employer is on the warpath, looking for blood,” I said.
“Whose?” His eyes didn’t leave the television screen.
“Not sure. Maybe mine, maybe yours.”
“Maybe that young man you thought was safe?”
“Maybe.”
“What’re you going to do about it?”
“Frankly, I don’t know. I just wanted to make sure you’re keeping your guard up.”
Sierra came from the kitchen carrying a box of limes. “Didn’t hear you come back in. Still thirsty?”
“I’m good, thanks. But I do have a question about that little trailer community north of town.”
“Paradiso?” Her face clouded, just like a sky expecting a storm.
“Who’s the toughest son of a bitch out there?”
“Why would you ask a question like that?”
“Do you have an answer?”
She put the box of limes down behind the bar and shook her head. “You get yourself killed, I’m not taking any responsibility for it.”
“Fair enough.”
“Royal Diggs,” she said.
“Royal?”
She nodded. “Royal. Fits him. Rules the roost out there.”
“Mean bastard,” Sylvester said.
“Lots of tattoos?”
“They all have lots of tattoos,” Sierra said.
“Wouldn’t happen to wear a big ring on his right hand?”
“Silver,” she said. “Face of a skeleton on it.” She eyed me suspiciously. “You’re not going out there.”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“Take a gun if you have one,” she said. “Better yet, a bazooka.”
She headed back to the kitchen. The door opened and two men walked in, their laughter harsh and loud. They took chairs at a table and one of them called out, “Sierra, where the hell are you, darlin’?”
I said quietly, “We need to talk, Sylvester.”
He gave a nod and said, “The El Dorado.”
CHAPTER 32
* * *
I drove south out of Sulfur Springs, up to the El Dorado, and parked shy of the mine itself, on a high, cactus-covered flat where I could see the land sloping down into Mexico and the long, dark line of the border fence.
A lesson from my earliest memories of my grandmother Dilsey, who was true-blood Iron Lake Ojibwe: Land is not insentient; it is possessed of spirit. Gazing down, I couldn’t help feeling that the fence and all it represented was a great violation of the spirit of the land. The mind-set that gave rise to the fence was a great folly, the idea that a thin wall of steel and the imaginary line it demarcated could stand against the tide that swept across the desert, which was the tide of time and changing circumstance. Politics were of a moment. Sentiments shifted. Nations rose and fell. Steel rusted and crumbled. But the desert and the flow of life across it would continue after that fence was nothing but scattered rubble among the cacti and the fear that built it was long forgotten.
The clouds in the east had turned black and boiling. Far in the distance, lightning stabbed at the ground. Sylvester’s truck turned onto the winding road up to the El Dorado, and I watched it approach and park next to mine. The old prospector got out and joined me where I stood surveying the country below.
“Better make it quick,” he said, nodding toward the coming monsoon storm.
“I thought the people that beat me up were after Peter,” I said. “I thought they were White Horse. And maybe they are, but I’m beginning to think that’s not why they wanted Peter.” I waited a moment, watched the lightning throw white pitchforks. “You said you stopped working for Marian after you stumbled across Peter in one of the mines. What changed?”
“He asked for my help. He wanted to file on the old claims himself and he wanted me to help him locate them.”
“To what end? He wasn’t interested in mining, was he?”
“Mining? Naw. His only interest was in keeping the people he brought across the border safe. He was hoping to string together a whole slew of sanctuaries, places only he knew about where he could bring people and keep them out of harm’s way while he put together more permanent places for them and arranged transport.”
“Did Marian know he was filing on those old claims?”
“Not much goes on in this county that Marian doesn’t know about.”
“So he was competition for her?”
“He has more old claims in his name now than she does.”
“And you helped him. You’re lucky you’re not dead.”
“Right back at you,” he said.
“There’s another thing. The authorities think Rodriguez has been stockpiling drugs. They think he might be using an old mine for that. And I think, like you say, that not much goes on in Coronado County that Marian doesn’t know about, which would include the drug traffic.”
He was quiet a moment. “Drugs and Marian? I suppose that could be true.”
“I’m beginning to wonder if maybe part of the reason Marian’s interested in those old diggings is that she thinks she might find more than just ore in one of them.”
Sylvester nodded, as if accepting the possibility. “That woman’s got a streak of greedy in her wider than the Rio Grande.”
“I’m thinking that if she’s actually involved in the drugs already moving through Paradiso, she might have the contacts to distribute a lot of product.”
“Hell, if Rodriguez got wind of that, she’d be dead in a heartbeat.”
“Unless Rodriguez was dead.”
“I don’t follow.”