I explained how I saw things: Marian Brown’s connection with White Horse and her part in the drug trade through Coronado County; her desire to be rid of Rodriguez; the control she wielded over the town cop Sanchez; her manipulation of Royal Diggs to get White Horse to do her dirty work; the old claims she’d been filing and the stashed drugs she was probably hoping to find in one of the diggings. He listened without interrupting.
When I finished, he looked away and studied the rain-streaked windows awhile. “It all fits,” he finally said. “We’ve had a good idea that Royal Diggs is behind the dealing out of Paradiso. He’s the cock of the walk out there. We’ve also had our eye on Sanchez, figuring that unless he was stupid—and I’m not convinced he isn’t—he knew about the drugs being trafficked and was probably on the take. Brown, she’s a new wrinkle.”
“If you suspected Diggs, why didn’t you move on him?”
“Not enough evidence. And he’s not the kind of guy who’s going to break if you sweat him. With Sanchez, we figured at some point he might become useful to us and we didn’t want to tip our hand. Rodriguez is the one we really want to nail.” He tapped the tabletop with his fingers, thinking. “But Brown.” He nodded, as if the idea appealed to him. “We know that Rodriguez has been diversifying, financially. We think some of the money is being laundered through Coronado County. Maybe Brown’s responsible for that. She’s a woman used to dealing with large sums in her land transactions. The last couple of years, she’s put an enormous amount of cash into building that expensive bunch of houses up on the mesa above Cadiz. Could be the money that bankrolled her development came from south of the border, out of Rodriguez’s pocket.”
“If that’s true, why get rid of Rodriguez? He’s the hand that feeds her.”
Sprangers drank some beer while he thought about that. “Like you say, maybe she’s looking for the stockpile of drugs we’re all interested in. She finds it and has the contacts to move it, she’s got millions. But it might also be she understands that if you throw in with a scorpion like Rodriguez, you’re going to get stung eventually. Maybe she’s afraid of him. If you know the cruelty he’s capable of, you’d be foolish not to be scared. And maybe this, too. If we’re right about her laundering money for him, we’re talking big money. With Rodriguez out of the picture, maybe she has more control over what she’s invested in his behalf. It’s a stretch, I know, but I think it’s worth pursuing. I’ll put my people on that.”
“There’s one thing that still troubles me a lot,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Somebody told both White Horse and Rodriguez about Peter’s rendezvous in the desert.”
“Brown,” he said, as if it were obvious.
“But how did she know?”
He shrugged. “Somebody in Bisonette’s organization leaked it to her.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“I’ll work on figuring out Brown,” he said. “You work on the mole in Bisonette’s group. We got a deal?”
I held up my beer and we clinked bottles to seal the agreement.
CHAPTER 33
* * *
There was a long wait ahead before my meeting with Rainy and Mondragón. I ate a Reuben at the Wagon Wheel. While I sat near the front window, I watched the storm play itself out over Cadiz and move to the west. With night, the sky cleared to a sea full of stars and a few floating islands of residual black clouds. On my walk back to the parsonage, I watched the heavens above the mountains to the east begin to silver with a haze from the glow of the not-quite-risen moon.
As I passed the church, I had an overwhelming impulse to spend a few minutes in the comfort of the little sanctuary. I unlocked the door and went in. The air inside was stuffy but had been cooled significantly by the passing monsoon. In the pitch dark, I turned my cell phone on and used the flashlight app to locate the candle Rainy and Mondragón had burned the night I first met them there. It was still sitting on the altar rail where she’d left it, along with a small box of wooden matches. I lit the candle and sat in the front pew.
Because the earth itself is one great spirit, every inch of it is sacred. Beneath the asphalt parking lot in New York City is ground no less hallowed than the ground beneath Notre Dame, or under the pines and spruce of the Northwoods. But there are places that remind us of the sacredness, and at that moment, the little sanctuary was one. I sat in the frail glow of the candlelight and closed my eyes and let my spirit connect with the calm of that quiet place.
Maybe it was because I’d stepped out of the flow of events, or maybe it was just the clarity that can come in moments of calm, but I began to make connections, to understand a little better how the threads were fitting together to form a web in Coronado County.
I heard the scrape of the old church door sliding open, and I turned. What I saw was no less surprising than if the Virgin Mary herself had been standing there.
“You a religious person? God-fearing?”
The big man came slowly into the drizzle of the candlelight, a gun in his hand, an oddly bemused look on his face. His head was shaved bald and he had tattoos everywhere. On a finger of his right hand was a big silver ring shaped like a skull.
“I think of myself more as a guy on a spiritual voyage,” I said. “My religion is just the boat I happen to be traveling in.”
“O’Connor. That’s Irish. You Catholic?”
“I am,” I confirmed. “What about you, Royal? Are you a religious person?”
“I was an altar boy,” he said. “Mass every Sunday.”
“Still attend?”
“Spent three years in Iraq. Killed every belief I ever had about God.”
“What do you believe in now?”
“Myself.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing else.”
“Lonely world.”
“I like it that way.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Been waiting for you.”
“Alone?”
Diggs smiled. “A little bird told me you’re planning on taking me down.”
“I’m going after White Horse. I understand they operate out of Paradiso. And I understand you’re the big man out there.”
“Mister, I am Paradiso.”
“So, going to beat me up again?”
“This time I plan to shoot you. Just get rid of your nosy ass.”
“You might want to hold off on that.”
He stood like a big, square chunk of boulder and waited for an explanation.
“Could be that the man who shot you in the parsonage is waiting outside to shoot you again,” I said.
His free hand moved toward his side where there was a little mounding under his T-shirt, probably bandaging from the wound Mondragón had inflicted, which though clearly not lethal, must have caused him a good deal of trouble. Then he barked a laugh as if he caught on that I was bluffing.
“One more thing,” I said. “You’re being played. Kill me and you’ll be dead, too, before you understand who’s playing you and why.”
The tattoo that crawled up his neck and the side of his face was a long green rattlesnake. He cocked his head, and the rattler moved as if alive.
“What are you talking about?” he said.
“You and White Horse and your ambush out there in the desert. You probably think that was only about getting rid of Rodriguez and that pesky Bisonette kid. You really had the wool pulled over your eyes on that one.”
“Talk to me.”