She said, “I had the nicest dreams last night. I woke up really early, a few times, but went straight back to sleep and they kept coming.”
“Anything I ought to know about?” I chuckled.
“Not today,” she replied.
I turned and kissed the top of her head and she cuddled up even tighter. A while later the car had warmed up and she reached over and eased off the blower knob. She moved over to the door and started getting animated about a whole lot of nothing outside the window. She had me stop a few times when she thought she’d spotted some petrified wood, and we ended up with a few sorry looking chunks rattling around on the floor board behind the seats.
On toward the border we started to pass a few roadside trading posts. We stopped and made a couple of pity purchases at a few of the more desolate looking establishments. Yuki toyed with her new earrings as we cruised by the rest of the garish tourist traps at the state line.
We were in Johnny’s country. This didn’t look to be the best part of it, but I guess there had to be more money in hocking Mexican blankets and turquoise trinkets to road-weary motorists than in herding sheep farther up on the reservation. At least the weather had warmed up nicely.
The commerce died off immediately across the New Mexico border. But another ten miles or so down the road we passed a couple of scrawny young girls sitting on a blanket under a make-shift sunshade, all by themselves, out in the middle of absolute nowhere.
Immediately, I could feel Yuki’s eyes on me. Without looking at her, I pulled over to the side of the road, checked the mirror, and pulled the U-turn. The girls were standing there waiting for us as if they knew we were coming back for them. I slowed and crossed over onto the shoulder. This time Yuki waited for me to help her with her door, and the girls had resumed their seat at the edge of the blanket with their paltry wares spread out in front of them.
Yuki got down on her knees in front of the blanket as I was scoping the utter barrenness of our surroundings. I heard a tiny gasp escape her. As I looked down she was pointing at an exquisitely carved silver bracelet inlaid with some finely shaped turquoise stones. I noticed that the entire collection on the blanket, what there was of it, was a whole other category of goods from what we’d seen before the border. The knowing smiles on the girls’ faces were somewhat shocking for young ladies of their tender age. Either they didn’t speak English, or they didn’t care too.
I took it that Yuki wasn’t up for bartering. She pulled a sawbuck out of her purse and forked it over. The girl started counting out whatever change they had in mind, but Yuki refused it and, with another knowing smile, the older girl put the change away.
I was starting to wonder who these girls belonged to and how long they planned on staying out here by themselves. I couldn’t see where they had any food or water with them. Then I caught sight of an unusual string tie in the shape of a horse head, also in silver with a similar type of turquoise inlay. It seemed a match to the bracelet, and sitting next to it was a similarly constructed hatpin in the shape of a feather.
I bent down and waggled the two items with my finger and looked the younger one in the eye. She smiled demurely and looked down. I fumbled with my wallet and drew out a measly couple of fins, laying them down on the blanket. I picked up the two items and dropped them in my pocket.
Now the girls were both smiling hard, looking straight to the horizon, but still as if they had some secret going between them. I assumed they were pegging this girl’s guy for a bit of a cheapskate. I consulted my wallet again, fished out half a sawbuck, and placed it down on the short pile. Their eyes met, and they looked supremely satisfied.
I had bought Yuki a straw cowboy hat in the kid’s section back at Crazy Horse’s Trading Post and she looked delicious in her sleeveless denim blouse, skin-tight jeans, and strapless pumps. I took the feather pin out of my pocket and fastened it to Yuki’s hat, and the girls seemed to approve.
There hadn’t been a word said the whole time we were there, and it would have seemed a little strange if I hadn’t already done it so many times in Japan. A lot of good could be accomplished with a smile, a slight bow, a wave, or a nod.
Yuki was fiddling with her bracelet as we got back on the road. I looked over at her and realized how good it made me feel to be squiring her around these past few days. This trip was going to end tonight in Albuquerque and thoughts of what lay ahead started to sink in.
We made town well after sunset and it was dark by the time we passed through the city center and found the Aztec Motel on the east side.
The clerk recommended the steak house back up the pike a few blocks, so we got over there quick and took our time over a pair of thick T-bones. It seemed Yuki had developed a taste for the bourbon so we pulled on a couple of those and talked over our plans for the next day.
* * *
It had occurred to me we’d better start off by checking in with the Bernalillo County Sheriff. The sunrise over the Sandia Mountains to the east was stunning as we left our rooms in the morning. We rolled straight over to the county building after a quick breakfast at the El Rey.
Sheriff Stan Mortenson was a grizzled old soul, tall and lean and burnt to a crisp by wind and sun. Ensconced behind a beat-up wooden desk and absorbed with a file in his hands, he was leaned back in his chair with his legs extended across a pulled-out drawer as we appeared at his office door. With a sweep of his arm he indicated a pair of stiff wood chairs in front of his desk and we sat.
I didn’t have much of an idea what to tell him, but I laid out my credentials and told him I was on retainer to Magnum Studios. I told him I was following up some connection to some creeps that were bothering one of his stars. If the sheriff was mildly intrigued, he didn’t show it.
“Got a name,” he asked.
“Yeah, Clanton,” I replied.
The old boy eased back in his chair and cast me the fisheye.
“Which one?”
“I don’t know. The dumb one. How many are there?”
“From what I can tell, they’re the bottom of the barrel from a clan of Arkies that moved on out here during the war. A whole family of petty grifters, as far as I know.
“Pa, Galen Clanton, is a scrawny old buzzard, and the boys, Earl and Floyd, are a pair of lamebrains. Elnora—they call her Ma—is the mean one, and the brains of the outfit. They got a daughter who just flat out got born into the wrong family, probably the wrong county. They operate out of a dump east of here in the canyon.
“That’s about all I know of ‘em. They’re making a living somehow. They seem to be connected up with the university some ways. At least the daughter is enrolled there. She must have a room downtown. I haven’t looked at them too closely. Haven’t had any complaints. If you pick the daughter up there on campus, you should be able to get a line on them.”
The sheriff tilted his head and shot me a level gaze.
“Is there anything going on with them that I should know about?” he asked.
“Nothing special,” I told him.
“Right” he grunted.
I said we’d be back to him if we developed some useful information and he left it at that. I had a call to make.
* * *
“Mack.”
“Man, is that you?
“ That’s right. Raymond James. Your old cellmate from the transport.”
It had been a good while. I’d last spoke with Mack on my arrival in Los Angeles and after exchanging a few letters we’d neglected to keep in touch. We spent a few minutes catching up and then I got down to business.
“Listen I thought I could use your help on something I’m working on. I remember you telling me your foster daughter was interested in a career with the Feds. She might have a good idea as to where we can take this. What was her name again?
“Veronica Elena. I call her Elena.”
“Oh yeah.”
“Whadda ya got?” he asked.
“Well, we got word out of Los Angeles of a shipment of classified
military goods, stolen stuff, being managed by the Comintern. We tracked it out here to Albuquerque. We’ve got the location and approximate timing of the shipment. I wanted to bring the federal boys in.”
“What exactly they got their hands on anyway?”
“I’m pretty sure its aeronautical equipment, maybe rocket motors. There’re R&D facilities all over this area and I believe the one we’re interested in is somewhere south of the city.”
“That sounds darn serious. Rocket and jet engine technology is top secret.”
“Well, yeah. They wouldn’t be wasting their time with auto parts.”
“Elena told me that the Feds have been giving these boys a pass ever since the war.” He informed me. “I don’t think you’re gonna get much interest out of them. Army intelligence could be a different deal. Let me think on it and get back to you.”
I told him where I could be reached and rang off. Mack called back the next evening.
“Elena and I talked it over and we figured it might be better if we took care of this ourselves. She didn’t believe there was any way the Feds were going to mobilize in time to intercept this shipment. They’re better at locking the barn once the horse has got out.
“If there was a way we could get our hands on it, I’ve got a plan cooked up to get the stuff back where it belongs.”
“That sounds a little tricky.”
“Well, we’ve got that end figured out too. Think you can get it up here?”
“Yeah. As it happens I’m gonna try to get Johnny Eagle out here with me. Maybe we can hijack that load.”
Mack said, “I think that’s exactly what you’re gonna do. Make sure the load gets away clean without raising anyone’s suspicions.”
“OK. Sounds like we got us a plan. We’ll get hold of that truck and get it on up to your place.”
“Yep, give us a call from Dallas and we’ll steer you here.”
Mack Holman had started out as a squad leader, and ended up being our commanding officer by the time we’d island-hopped over to Okinawa. He told me if I‘d had a mind for ranching to come out to Dallas when I got stateside and look him up at the Diamond Bar Ranch. After getting involved with starting the agency I hadn’t given him much thought. For this caper there was no one I’d rather have assist with strategy and planning.
Veronica Elena had been raised on the ranch. Way Mack told it her father Umberto was a Mexican vaquero and long-time ranch hand who met an untimely end in a fluke stampede. Her mother had passed long before in the old country, so Mack and his better half Mame had raised the young girl as their own.
She’d honored in the local high school and attended U of Texas before being approached by the FBI and starting her career in the Dallas field office.
* * *
Yuki had spent the better part of the week trying to make contact with the Clanton daughter at the university. She came back to the Aztec one evening beaming with an unmistakable look of success.
“I finally ran into her at the Student Union. I used the old dodge where I asked her if we didn’t sometimes ride the same bus in the mornings to school. She told me, ’Maybe, because I live in Old Town and take the bus to school everyday.’ So I told her ‘That’s where I’ve maybe seen you before.”
“Did she ask who you were?”
“Yes she did. I told her I’m an exchange student from Tokyo in a science program and was checking some possible additional classes.
This afternoon I staked out her last class and ran to catch her bus just as it was leaving. We rode together and she got off at Rio Grande Boulevard. I stayed on to the next stop, crossed the street and came back here.”
With Yuki’s success it looked like we were good to follow her home from school the next afternoon.
* * *
As it turned out the girl was late arriving the next day and it was well after five when she showed at the bus stop carrying several shopping bags. We tailed her up Romero to an ancient rooming house on South Plaza.
The weathered adobe structure was a low, long one-story stucco and wood-beam affair with several entry doors, each under a tired dusty stoop. The girl had entered the third door from the intersection.
Yuki and I doubled back and walked Old Town Road over to San Felipe, then up to the small commons known as La Placita. From across the street we could see that an alley extended in from the street along the length of the old boarding house.
Yuki and I strolled through the plaza and sat awhile outside the old church, waiting for the sun to go down. Once dusk had settled in, we re-crossed the plaza and entered the alley running alongside the boarding rooms.
There were some abandoned milk crates down toward the far end, so we fetched two and poked about finding the right dust-clogged window. The fourth from the street it was and we quietly set the crates and climbed up on either side of the glass.
There they were: The Clantons. It was hard to tell if they came from redneck or hillbilly stock. Ma and Pa both looked to be about one genetic step above some poorly-imagined mutant swamp critter from a B-movie. Pa didn’t look all too terribly bad from a distance. He was a tall, barrel-chested mutt with beefy thighs and long muscular arms. But the effect was ruined up close, because from the neck up he resembled nothing other than a pig-faced moron.
The two boys looked like they’d fallen out of a tree. Next to Pa, they were downright scrawny. They appeared as if they made up for their diminutive stature with an overabundance of meanness and stupidity.
The larger of the two boys was splayed out on the sofa with a moronic smile that looked to be permanently affixed to his map. He didn’t look to have a lick of sense. The shorter one was thin, but well built, and his face bore the mean aspect of the perennially abused.
The daughter, on the other hand, was attractive with a disconcerting suggestion of normality. This was mildly disturbing given her parentage.
And then there was Ma Clanton, in the flesh. She was a hefty wench, tall and bony, with wide shoulders. She looked like she should have two hooves and a mustache. The light was a little dim for me to gain a true appreciation of her ugliness, but what I could see made it strictly for the after-dinner hour. Suffice it to say she had the romantic appeal of a slaughtered buffalo.
This pair had one thing in common. Neither of them should be breeding. Unfortunately, however, they’d spawned.
Pa and the two boys appeared to be thoroughly whipped. Each word Ma spat out brought a flinch from one or the other. The old man seemed distracted to the point of not knowing or caring.
From outside the window, the scene remained quiet until the girl got up and left the room. Ma sat up and turned to the boys.
“We gotta find something to do with Lamar,” she growled.
“Yeah, why’d you kill him anyway?” the smaller boy asked.
“That damn fool was running his fat mouth around town. It was Bucky’s Ma told me about him. Said Lamar told Bucky some wild story that we was makin’ the big bucks now as foreign agents. Bucky and his Ma are OK. They weren’t buying it.
“But anyways I told her that Lamar was fixing to join the Army. Now the stupid little bastard is cooling off in the root cellar out at the ranch and we gotta figure a way to get rid of him. He’s the last of their line anyway.”
“Isn’t he your middle brother’s son?” asked Pa from his barkalounger.
Ma turned. “Yeah, that boy was too stupid to live too. He married some half-breed from up Oklahoma way and when the dumb slut took off with one of his drinking buddies, he drove his car into a bridge. I suppose that ol’ squaw might have passed another litter, but I guarantee you there cain’t be another pair like Lamar and his dumb daddy.”
The moron heaved himself up to the edge of the sofa. “Hey ma, I knew an Injun once from up to Gallup way that told me about a great place to stash a corpse.”
Ma snapped her head back. “Now just what were you talking to him about that for?”
“No reason. We were just shooting the bull one day
about people he’d like to see dead. And I told him it must be real easy to get rid of ‘em out here in the desert.
“He’d said, ‘No, it’s not that easy at all. The animals get at ‘em and the next thing you know you got evidence spread over half a square mile in plain sight.’ He said you need to find someplace to put ‘em where the critters can’t get to ‘em.”
“Well that makes sense. What else did he tell you? This is the first time I’ve had to plant one of my own kinfolk for being a dumbass.”
“He told me the best place was a big ol’ rock rubble pile. Says you move some rocks, plant the body, and put the rocks back over it. Use rocks big enough that the animals can’t move em. ‘Cause it ain’t buried it’ll dry out like a piece of deer jerky. He says it’s real hard to identify what’s left after a year or so. And the chances of it being stumbled on are near to none.
“He told me he had his eye on this spot out in central Arizona. One of his Yavapai buddies had mentioned it to him. A big old pile of rocks out at the end of nowhere in a place called Verde Ranch, north of Prescott. Now what he said was out there was the ruins of an old Santa Fe bunkhouse the railroad boys used back last century when they were blasting track through the mesa. He said it was a real bitch to get to, but no one ever goes there. And there’s enough rubble there to hide a whole wedding party.
“Anyways, I was interested enough to get him to draw me a little map.”
“Is it here?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, go get it. I want this done right.”
Pa said, “Bertie, we got to put off the shipment ‘til this gets taken care of.”
Ma turned again. “I know, Henry. I agree with you. Go ahead and send the Indian away for a week. Tell him to come back next week. We’ll get the boys here to get this done quick.”
“Here’s the map Ma. By the way, how’d you get ‘im?”
“Ha! It was easy. I told him he’d come into some money his daddy had left him we’ found and would he get on down to the ranch. Said some of it was in cash and some in bearer certificates. I was a little worried later I might have overplayed my hand. But with him bein’ so stupid it never did occur to him that the chances of me ever handing over some cash to him were less than none.
“The boy showed up, pantin’ like an ol’ coonhound with a big ol’ dumb grin on his face. I sat him down in front of a big ol’ piece of pecan pie and took him down with that big marble roller your daddy done got for me two Christmases ago. Thank you Pa!”