“Not while you’re holding a gun.”
He considered the issue. He had me by sixty or seventy pounds, none of it doughy, and stood a good five inches taller. To him I was an old man. I’m sure he figured that if he had to, he could break my spine like it was a dry twig. I figured he was probably right.
His T-shirt was black, with a white skull across the front. He lifted it and slipped the gun—a big one, maybe a Desert Eagle—into the waist of his jeans.
“So talk,” he said.
“For a guy who prefers to live off the grid, there are sure a lot of people interested in you.”
“Like who?”
“DEA, Border Patrol, Coronado County Sheriff, Carlos Rodriguez, Marian Brown. And that’s just for starters. Some of them want to see you behind bars. Some of them want you dead. And one of them is playing you like you’re her little puppet.”
“What do you mean?”
“You move drugs through Paradiso. That doesn’t seem much of a secret out here. Along the border in Coronado County, Carlos Rodriguez controls everything illegal that comes across. Also not much of a secret. You must have known who you were out there to kill in that desert ambush. So I ask myself, why would you shoot the man supplying you with product? The best answer I can come up with is that someone else had promised to supply you, probably more cheaply, if you got rid of the competition. So she convinced you to use White Horse to do her dirty work. How am I doing so far?”
“You got about thirty seconds before I blow you away.”
“She promised you product. She must have proven that she could supply it. What was it? Cocaine? Meth? Marijuana?”
He thought about whether to answer, then, probably because he figured on killing me, he said, “Cocaine.”
“Did you ever ask yourself how she was able to do that? I’ll tell you how. Rodriguez has a huge stash somewhere in Coronado County, millions of dollars’ worth, and I think Marian Brown knows where it is. With Rodriguez out of the way, she gets the stash.”
“If that’s true, why would I mind killing Rodriguez? I don’t see how she played me.”
“You and White Horse do her dirty work, she tosses you a few bones, but she keeps the lion’s share of the profit. Like I said, millions.”
“How do you know this?”
“My intel is better than yours.”
His pallid blue eyes squinted, then he said, “Bullshit. How would she know about this stash, if it even exists?”
“Sylvester’s been helping her locate old mining claims. You probably know that. It’s why you killed his mule. Punishment or maybe a warning not to help Bisonette anymore. I think her initial interest was in controlling access to any land that might be worked when mining comes back to this area. But I think she stumbled onto something in one of those old diggings.”
“The stash,” Diggs said.
“And I have just one question, Royal. Why should she get all that money and you get only bones?”
I’d clearly offered him a new perspective. He kept squinting as he rolled all this speculation around in his head. “Your intel,” he finally said. “Who’s supplying it?”
“A variety of sources. We communicate in an interesting way.”
“What’s that?”
“We leave notes for each other.”
“Where?”
“I’ll show you.”
I stood up from the pew. He loomed over me, threatening, but didn’t go for his gun. I moved past him, through the gap in the altar rail and up to the altar itself. He followed me. I stood before the cross, whose brassy surface gleamed like gold in the candlelight.
“I was an altar boy, too,” I said. “For me, there’s still something a little mystical about being up here.”
“You’ve never seen your friends blown to pieces.”
“No,” I admitted.
“Well?”
“We leave the notes under here,” I said, lifting the cross with both hands. The base was heavy.
His blue eyes settled on the white altar cloth, which was empty. In that moment of his distraction, I swung the cross, base first, and caught him where the rattlesnake crawled up the side of his face. He staggered back. I swung again, and the snake spit blood. Diggs stumbled, flipped backward over the altar rail, and the back of his bald head hit the stone floor with a dull, heavy thud. He lay still, a rivulet of red blood running from his temple and glistening in the candlelight.
*
Royal Diggs was conscious but still a little dazed when Deputy Crockett cuffed him. Before he hauled the big man away, Crockett looked at me with what I interpreted as friendly admiration. “Good job,” he said. “Must be the Indian in you.” He reached up and gave a respectful little tip of that tan cowboy hat with the colorfully beaded band. Then he and Vega escorted Diggs outside to a waiting cruiser. Sprangers stayed behind, lingering with me in the sanctuary.
“What were you doing here?” he asked.
“Could be I was praying for some answers. And I think I have one.”
I offered him my speculation that Marian Brown had probably found Rodriguez’s drug stash and had used White Horse to get him out of the picture.
“We’ll sweat Diggs,” Sprangers said. “I doubt we’ll get anything. But we’ll also bring in Marian Brown and Sanchez. Maybe one of them will break. I’d like you there for that.”
I thought about my meeting with Rainy and Mondragón. “I’ll pass.”
He seemed surprised but let it slide. “We’ll need an official statement from you about this evening.”
“It’s been a long day. Would first thing in the morning be okay?”
“That’ll do.”
We split up outside the church, and I headed back to the parsonage. There was still half an hour before I would see Rainy again, and I slipped out the back door and walked through Cadiz to the road up the mesa to the Goodman Center. As before, Mondragón’s SUV was parked in a far corner of the lot, away from the lights. When I approached, Rainy jumped out and ran to me. She threw her arms around me and laid her cheek against mine, and I smelled her hair, and, God, was it wonderful.
“Whenever I’m not with you, I worry like crazy,” she whispered.
“You’re with me now.”
I kissed her, and the wolf of fear that had tried so viciously to chew out my gut fled in a heartbeat.
Mondragón came from the SUV, along with another figure, who was limping.
“How are you doing, Peter?” I asked.
“I’ll survive.” He shook my hand. “Thanks for everything, Cork.”
“Where are Juan and the others?”
“Safe,” Peter said.
“In one of your mine sanctuaries?”
“Figured that out, did you?”
“With a little help from Sylvester.”
“We can’t move them for a couple days, but they’ll be safe until then.”
“I don’t know about that, Peter. Someone in your organization sold you out to Rodriguez. He may know all about your sanctuaries.”
“I’m the only one who knows them all.”
“What about Sylvester?”
“He wouldn’t sell me out.”
Mondragón said to me, “Have you discovered anything more?”
I told them what I knew and what I suspected.