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  “I’ve done this before,” The Professor said, sounding like a salesman pitching himself.

  “So Nacho informs me. A long time ago. You might be out of trim.”

  “You don’t forget how. It’s like riding a bike. If you’re wondering what it would cost the U.S. government besides your salary, the answer is nothing. Carrasco will fund the buys.”

  The color of Pierce’s eyes—they looked like aluminum disks—gave off a bitter smell. He turned them to Nacho. “You talked to the man himself?”

  “This afternoon. It’s The Professor’s idea, but Joaquín is behind it, one hundred percent.”

  “All that Joaquín asks is that his role in it is kept under wraps,” said The Professor. “We play it as a joint operation, U.S. Customs and the MexFeds join hands to take down a major drug dealer.”

  “Writing the headlines already?” asked Pierce. “There’s the small problem of making Yvonne’s acquaintance. How do you plan to do that?”

  “I’m working on it. But I need to know before I go ahead that you’re all in.”

  “You’ve got brass ones, I’ll give you that much. If she makes you, the best you could hope for is that she takes less than three days to kill you.”

  Pierce swung off his chair and extended a hand that looked only a little smaller than a catcher’s mitt.

  The Professor shook it. “Actually,” he said with a trace of British slur—ekshulee—“I’m looking forward to it. Should be fun.”

  26

  SELDOM IN THE COURSE of his clandestine labors had The Professor resorted to Sherlock Holmes disguises; however, present circumstances dictated that he blend in with the scenery. His plan was to turn Billy Cruz, and that had brought him here, in what used to be Carrasco’s territory but was now Yvonne’s. He was behind enemy lines. Wearing a straw cowboy hat, jeans, and a dirty denim shirt, towing an empty two-horse trailer behind a Ford pickup that would have had a round-trip to the moon on its odometer if its odometer still worked—the dial had frozen at 300,000 kilometers at some point in the remote past—he was to all appearances a shabby vaquero in a shabby truck. Wide patches of rock and gravel scabbed the overgrazed hillsides, upon which scrawny cattle foraged or lazed under mesquite trees, branches bent and twisted, like arthritic fingers. No rain had fallen in a week—a break in the chubascos—and he hung well behind the convoy (three vans led by Billy Cruz in a white Dodge Ram) to keep from being choked and blinded by the dust. He had picked up the convoy at the Cananea motel where the mojados had been stashed overnight, then followed it down Mex-2 and onto the road to Santa Cruz, its destination. There, Billy would assemble his human cargo for a night run to the border, seven miles away.

  Soldiers at the San Lazaro checkpoint flagged The Professor down, and as one, an Indian, listlessly searched the trailer, another peeked into the truck and asked where he was going. To a rancho to pick up some horses, he answered, and continued on. Approaching a cattle guard, a familiar stench assaulted his nostrils. Lying at the roadside was the bloated, fly-specked carcass of a horse, all four legs chopped off at the knee. The animal, blind or extremely stupid, must have attempted to cross the cattle guard and gotten trapped between the rails, blocking the road until someone shot it, amputated its lower legs, and towed it out of the way. The border. La linea. La frontera. Lovely part of the world.

  Water was flowing in the Santa Cruz River, not much, maybe a foot. Beyond it was its namesake town, a compact, tidy settlement of flat-roofed houses and shops, ornate iron bars on the windows. Half a block ahead the convoy parked in front of a grocery. The Professor watched the drivers go into the store and come out ten minutes later, lugging supplies in plastic bags. Probably the standard pollo fare—cans of frijoles, sterno to heat them, bottled water, Electrolit. A boost to the local economy.

  He reached under the seat for his Motorola handheld and radioed the federal police station. “I am in town and so is he. I will tell you to pick him up.”

  “Sí, mi capitán,” a voice replied.

  The small contingent of federales were his only allies here. They’d remained loyal to Joaquín after Yvonne’s swift takeover, partly because she, calculating that her army patrons provided sufficient protection, had failed to cut them in.

  He trailed the vehicles past the plaza to the Pemex station, where they gassed up. From there they proceeded up an unpaved side street, stopping at a mud-brick building with bedsheets curtaining its windows. A wetback hostel. A stash house. The migrants piled out of the vans, around forty of them clutching flight bags, backpacks, and small suitcases, and were hustled inside. Cruz went in with them, carrying an attaché case. The vans left, heading back to Cananea to pick up another load. Cruz emerged from the stash house after collecting his fees and drove back to the plaza, where a small clubfooted girl watched her playmates climbing on the water-tower girders and several young men idled on the benches, smoking, talking. Parked near the police station, on the opposite side of the plaza, The Professor observed Cruz summon the young men to his Dodge for a conference. These were the guides who would lead the migrants through the perils of serpents and scorpions and heat into El Norte, where dreams came true, though not always. Cruz looked quite relaxed, guzzling a beer as he gave instructions. Yvonne must have obtained the Sonoran license plates on his truck; there would be a forged Mexican registration in the glove compartment and a Mexican driver’s license in his wallet, everything he needed to prove he was a citizen.

  The streetlamps came on, the kids went home, the clubfooted girl hobbling behind, and the coyotes hurried off in the direction of the stash house. As Cruz pulled away, The Professor keyed his Motorola.

  “He is leaving now, going south,” he said, and gave the tag numbers and a description of the truck. “Remember, outside of town. Be sure no one sees the arrest.”

  “Sí, mi capitán.”

  He slouched behind the wheel, tipping the cowboy hat over his eyes, and waited. Twenty minutes later the radio crackled. They had picked him up, and no, there had been no trouble. Another twenty minutes passed. A federal police SUV pulled up in front of the whitewashed station, across from the courthouse. In handcuffs Cruz was led inside by two federales. The Professor bided his time, then walked up the street, past the church, and entered the station, so sparsely furnished it almost looked uninhabited. A cop sat at a desk, filling out the arrest report on a manual typewriter—the twenty-first century had not yet caught up to Santa Cruz and probably never would. The cop opened Cruz’s attaché case, filled with bundles of hundred-dollar bills, maybe fifty thousand all together, a sight to tempt Saint Francis, and handed The Professor a plastic evidence bag containing Cruz’s wallet and car keys. Inside the wallet were a thousand pesos and two hundred dollars in cash, a Mexican license issued to one Jaime Ortega, and tucked into a compartment, an Arizona license and credit cards in the name of William Cruz. Sloppy, he thought. Exceptionally sloppy. Cruz had flunked Fugitive 101.

  He was in what passed for the lockup—a bare-walled room just big enough to accommodate a cot and a toilet. The room stank of urine, of every unwashed body that had spent any time there. Still cuffed, a disconsolate Cruz sat on the concrete floor, wedged into a corner. He couldn’t sit on the cot, infested with fleas. The Professor motioned to the federale to take the handcuffs off.

  “Buenas noches, Jaime. Quisiera tener unas palabritas con usted. ¿Está bien?”

  Rubbing his wrists, his fingertips blackened by fingerprint ink, Cruz looked up warily from under his pale, scarred eyebrows. “¿Quién eres?”

  “At the moment, the only friend you’ve got in the world.”

  Cruz blinked, hearing what appeared to be a vaquero address him in perfect English. “American?”

  “That’s not important, Jaime. I should say Billy. The only important thing is that I’m your friend.”

  “What—what are you … what do you want?”

  “I want you to get up off the floor and sit on the toilet.”

  “Hey, bro—the f
loor’s fine.”

  The Professor made a sound of dismay. “You’re in trouble. You’re an American citizen illegally in Mexico, with a phony driver’s license under an assumed name. You’ve got a suitcase full of cash you can’t account for. You’re also wanted for questioning in Arizona about a double homicide. I’m sure the gentlemen who arrested you have gone over all that with you.”

  “What of it?”

  “If you would like these troubles to go away, you’ll do as I ask.”

  Cruz pulled himself to his feet and sat on the commode. Its acrid smell had a color and shape—a greenish blob—and Cruz’s handsome but battered face made a distinctive sound, the sound of footsteps crunching on gravel.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Carrington. A few years ago you did time in the Arizona state penitentiary on drug charges. That’s where you and I became friends.”

  “Never saw you in my life,” said Cruz, after a silence.

  “I know that. You know that. Yvonne Menéndez doesn’t know that. You’re going to introduce me to Yvonne, you’re going to vouch for me. You’re going to tell her that I’m your old cellmate from Florence, and that I want to do business with her. No mota, coke only, in quantity. That’s what I want. I want to meet Yvonne Menéndez.”

  “Bro, I don’t—”

  The Professor signaled him to be quiet. “Let’s make this conversation short and pleasant instead of long and unpleasant. Please don’t tell me you don’t know any Yvonne Menéndez. You’re living on her ranch, you’re running wets into the U.S. with her blessings, and you’re fucking her.”

  Cruz stared at him for half a second before his glance skidded away. He muttered something.

  “I’m not sure you appreciate your situation. If I leave here a disappointed man, the MexFeds are going to take you to the Nogales port of entry and hand you over to Sheriff Danny Rodriguez. He’s got an eyewitness and evidence identifying you as the guy who killed a couple of Mexicans in January. They were carrying drugs, which you stole. Twenty-five years at least, maybe life, maybe, if the prosecutor does a bang-up job, a lethal injection. Now, I can understand why you might be willing to take that risk. A conviction is a possibility, the alternative is a certainty.”

  He was gaining Cruz’s attention. “What alternative?”

  “What Yvonne will do to you if she finds out that you and your deceased uncle were ripping her off.”

  “You’re talking shit!” Cruz exclaimed.

  “I’m a student of history, Billy, and I’ve done some research this past week or so into recent history. Vicente was a kleptomaniac, couldn’t resist stealing from whoever he was working for, and he was stealing from Yvonne. Part of a load here, part of a load there. Sometimes he had problems crossing the stolen merca. That’s when he’d call on his pollero nephew to rope a few mojados to mule it over. Then he’d split the proceeds with you. So one day last winter, you got three wets down on their luck to pack in about sixty, seventy kilos of mota. The plan was for them to move behind a vanload of illegals who were supposed to decoy the Border Patrol in case they were in the neighborhood. You were on the other side, waiting to pick up the load. But things went wrong. You didn’t know what or why—I imagine you do now—all you knew was that your three mules didn’t show. ‘They’re ripping me off!’ is what you thought. You tracked them down and capped two. You couldn’t find the third but figured you’d better snatch the load and get the hell out. That’s exactly what you did.”

  Hands folded between his knees, Cruz did not respond.

  “It’s interesting when you think about it. It’s, oh, ironic. You didn’t know at the time that the woman you and your uncle had ripped off had ordered the illegals in the van to be massacred to teach a lesson. And she didn’t know that right behind that van was another, with her merca in it. It scares me to think what she would do if she ever found out. And you being her fuck of the month would only make it worse. Hell hath no fury, et cetera. So here you are, between the rock—a murder trial—and the hard place—Yvonne Menéndez. No, you don’t want me to leave here disappointed.”

  Cruz rubbed his face with both hands. “My best friend in the world.”

  “Best and only. All you have to do is make an introduction, and oh yeah, whenever you think of it, keep me informed about what your lover and patroness is up to.”

  “You didn’t say nothing before about snitching.”

  “It must have slipped my mind.”

  “So what are you? DEA? ICE? FBI?”

  “You’ve got a real command of the alphabet,” The Professor said. “What I am doesn’t matter. All that matters is for us to be friends.”

  27

  “WANT YOU TO MEET my cousin and new partner,” Blaine said to the bartender in the Wagon Wheel Saloon (PATAGONIA’S ORIGINAL COWBOY BAR—ESTABLISHED 1937 read the sign out front). “Signed the papers today.”

  The bartender, a tall and substantial man with a sweatband of brownish hair, thrust out his hand to Castle. “Word’s all over town that you pulled Blaine’s fat out of the fire. Don’t know if I should congratulate you or feel sorry for you. What’ll it be?”

  It was Castle’s first time in the Wagon Wheel. A vintage Hank Williams tune played on the jukebox, and two men circled the pool table chalking cues; a stuffed bobcat crouched on a fired-brick wall displaying antique firearms and frontier implements. Castle wanted a martini, but the saloon did not seem like a martini sort of place, so he ordered a Pacífico with a tequila chaser.

  “And none of that well tequila that you can burn in a Coleman lantern,” Blaine said. “My cuzzy has refined tastes.”

  “Will this do, sir?” asked the barkeep, holding up a bottle of Patrón Silver.

  Blaine slapped two twenties on the bar and motioned with his finger that he was buying the house. A couple of women customers smiled at him discreetly, men in cowboy hats and baseball caps and work shirts, looking through shoals of cigarette smoke stirred by a hot August breeze blowing through the screen door, nodded or flipped two-finger salutes. Castle, garbed in the khakis, polo shirt, and loafers he’d worn to Lovelace’s Tucson office, felt out of place, despite his new status as a working cattleman. He, Blaine, and Monica had signed the incorporation papers in the morning, and he had turned over a check made out to the Internal Revenue Service for the first payment on the estate taxes. Looking at the figure had brought on a wave of buyer’s remorse—not the amount itself but the commitment it represented.

  The bartender came back from attending another customer and poured himself a shot of the well tequila. “Need to light my inner Coleman lantern. Salud, you two.”

  “Salud,” said Blaine, raising his beer.

  “So the ranch is off the market? I can tell Ted Turner to forget it the next time he’s in here?”

  “As of too-day. And as of too-morrow, Gil gets to find out what he paid for. We’re gone to—”

  The sharp rap of an empty beer bottle on the bar interrupted Blaine. “Can a man get a drink around here?”

  “Look who’s here,” drawled Blaine, glowering at the wasted figure standing between two seated patrons, holding a cue stick. “My offer don’t apply to him,” he said to the barkeep, who took the empty, pulled a fresh one from the cooler, and said, “Three-fifty.”

  “You oughta be careful who you let into this place,” Blaine said in a loud voice.

  Idaho Jim paid for his drink and threw a hard look at him. “I was just thinking the same thing.”

  He went to the pool table and, setting the beer on the floor, racked the balls. His partner, a Mexican with the dimensions of a retired nose tackle, broke the rack, the cue ball cracking like a starter’s pistol, the balls exploding in all directions.

  “You seem to have a problem with that guy,” the bartender remarked to Blaine.

  “More him with me. Who’s the big Mexican?”

  “Name is Linares. That’s all I know.”

  Blaine fell into one of his brooding silences, then finished
his beer. “Drink up, Gil. All of a sudden I don’t feel like celebrating.”

  As they left, Idaho Jim crouched over the table to line up a shot. At the moment when he drew the cue stick, Blaine managed to bump into him on the way out the door. The tip made a splintering sound, and the cue ball dribbled off wide of its mark.

  They had just got into Castle’s Suburban when the Mexican giant appeared outside. Although his arms and hands spelled “blunt-force trauma,” he wore an almost genial smile. “Hey, man, got to tell you something,” he said, looking at Blaine. “You gotta lot of luck. You don’t know how much. You shouldn’t push it, you know?”

  Blaine started to say something, but Castle backed out onto the street before he could say it.

  DURING HIS EIGHT MONTHS at the San Ignacio, Castle had sampled the drudgery of the ranchman’s life; the next morning, he got a chance to experience the romance of it: a gathering, which was the correct term for what tenderfeet called a roundup. Yesterday, after the near altercation at the Wagon Wheel, Blaine had given him a crash course in the terminologies of his newfound trade—the different parts of the stock saddle, the various kinds of bits and bridles—along with lectures on cattle breeds, species of grasses, the current cattle market, the San Ignacio’s business plan (to sell yearling steers at 780 pounds). In delivering these tutorials, Blaine was determined to show that although the cattle business wasn’t, in Castle’s words, nuclear physics, it wasn’t first grade, either.

  Now, as the sky lightened to oyster gray, nine people rode out of ranch headquarters at an easy trot—Blaine, Monica, Gerardo, Castle, Tessa, McIntyre, and the manager of a neighboring ranch with his two young hands, an Anglo and a Mexican. There was no wind and no sound except for the hoofbeats. The Huachucas retarded the dawn, and Venus shone in the east, its brilliance fading as the sun rose behind the mountains, coloring a reef of clouds pale pink, then peach, and finally a fiery gold. The Mexican hand loped out ahead of the others. Blaine’s neighbor rode after him, and after catching up, he smacked the young cowboy on the back with his hat and spoke to him sharply in Spanish. The cowboy pulled rein, then waited for the riders to pass before taking his place in the rear.