A Flower in the Desert (27 page)

Juanita would most likely be safer in Norman Montoya's house than she would be anywhere else. Maybe Montoya would keep his word and maybe he wouldn't, but enough things had happened lately for me to start thinking that his word might not matter any longer. Montoya wasn't the danger; the Salvadoran was. Even if Montoya were lying, I didn't believe that he wanted to kill Juanita Carrera and Melissa Alonzo. And I believed that the Salvadoran probably did.

“All right,” I said. “But only if she agrees. And if your people find her, have them tread gently. She's probably terrified.”

“Yes, Mr. Croft. My people have been so instructed.” A gentle reminder that we had already discussed this.

“All right,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Oh, one thing more.”

“Yes?”

“I understand that in the account you gave to your visitors last night, you were kind enough not to mention my name. I sincerely appreciate your discretion, but I wanted to tell you that it was in this case unnecessary. Please feel no hesitation whatever about providing my name, should you be asked it.”

“Fine.”

“I suspect that I shall be able to withstand any scrutiny offered to me by the state police.”

Why not. He'd been withstanding that, and worse, for most of his adult life.

I called Rita next.

“All right, Joshua, this idiotic little light of Leroy's is on, so I'm assuming it's safe to talk. I tried to reach you at home as soon as I read the newspaper, but you'd already left. What on earth is going on?”

I told her about my interview with Deirdre Polk, and what Deirdre had told me about Juanita Carrera. “It looks like you were right,” I said. “Something happened down there, in El Salvador. Probably something that involved Carrera in some way.”

“What have you done about locating her?”

I told her that the state police, Missing Persons, and Norman Montoya's troops were all out looking for her.

She said, “Tell me about the state police.”

I did, and then I told her about finding the transponder in the Subaru.

“And you think it was planted by the Salvadoran,” she said. “And you think that was how he found Deirdre Polk.”

“I know it was planted by the Salvadoran. But there's more than one of them. I saw them both this morning. We compared hardware. Theirs was better.”

There was a brief silence on the line. Then Rita said, “Do I want to hear about this?”

“Probably not.”

“Tell me anyway.”

When I finished, she said, “And you're all right?”

“I'm fine. They blew out a headlight on the station wagon. I brought it in to Ernie's, on St. Francis. I'm driving a loaner, a Jeep.”

“Joshua, I don't care what you're driving.”

“It's a pretty neat car, Rita.”

“It was foolish, leading those two men out there.”

“Yeah, I know. Hector's already explained it to me.”

Another silence. “Deirdre Polk's death wasn't your fault, Joshua.”

“I know that, Rita. I'm okay now.”

“You're okay because you let someone shoot at you. If he'd hit you, you'd probably feel wonderful.”

“Right, Rita.” There was some truth in what she said.

She was silent for a moment, and then she said, “What did you do with the transponder?”

“Gave it to Hector.”

“You'll have to be careful, Joshua. They know now that you know about them. And they know that you're looking for the same thing they are. They may decide that you're a liability.”

“I intend to be a very big liability.”

“This isn't a game, Joshua. Concentrate on Melissa Alonzo.”

“Yes dear.”

“Stop it.”

“There is one thing we could try. Deirdre Polk told me that Melissa occasionally visited an S and M group down in Albuquerque. Maybe if we could locate it, someone in the group could tell us something about Melissa.”

“I've already located it. It's called the New Mexico Power Exchange.”

“How'd you do that? Not the computer.”

“The computer. When you told me that Melissa had been involved in S and M in Los Angeles, it occurred to me that she might've been involved out here. I left a message on the CompuServe bulletin board asking for information about S and M groups in the Southwest. I got an answer last night, and a phone number. I called it and talked to the woman who runs the group.”

“And? Does she know Melissa Alonzo?”

“Yes, but she didn't want to talk over the phone.”

“So I'll go down to Albuquerque.”

“You won't have to. She's coming to Santa Fe today. She'll be at my house at three o'clock this afternoon.”

“I'll be there.”

“Good. Call me if anything else happens. And be careful.”

“Yes dear.”

She hung up.

I was just about to dial the number of the local newspaper when the telephone rang. I picked it up.

“Croft, what the fuck is going on? Where've you been all morning?”

Roy Alonzo.

“Gathering rosebuds. Get off my back, Alonzo. I told you, I'm not working for you. I'm working for your uncle.” There was more anger in my voice than I generally liked to hear.

He hesitated a moment, and then he said, “All right, look. I apologize. But I'm fucking frantic. The state police came to see me this morning. I hadn't even finished my goddamn coffee.” Me they bother in the middle of the night. With Roy Alonzo, they wait until morning. Fame has its advantages. He said, “This woman that was killed, Deirdre Polk, she was a friend of Melissa's?”

“Yeah. The PI you hired back in August knew that. He talked to her.”

“He mentioned her name. I got the impression she was just a casual acquaintance, an artist whose paintings Melissa liked. And now the police are telling me she's dead, killed the same way that Cathryn was. What's going on here, Croft? Is Melissa in danger?”

“That matters to you?”

“Of course it matters. Melissa has her problems, she's fairly screwed up, obviously, and I've got good reasons to be angry with her, but I certainly wouldn't want her to get hurt. And my daughter's with her, remember?”

“I remember.”

“So what's the story here? Who killed Deirdre Polk?”

“I don't know. The police are working on it.”

“Look, could we meet sometime today? I've got a business thing at one o'clock, but I'm clear after two thirty. I'd really appreciate it, Croft. I won't take much of your time.”

I didn't want to meet with the man. Probably because I'd come to believe that the appellate court had made a mistake. I was more or less persuaded now that Alonzo had been guilty of molesting his daughter. But I knew that I could be wrong. And he sounded genuinely distressed.

I said, “Do you know the Fort Marcy complex? Mager's Field?”

“Off Washington? Across from the Ski Basin Road?”

“Yeah. I'll be there around five thirty.”

“Great. Thank you. I'll be there.”

“I'll be at the pool.”

“Terrific. See you then. And thanks again, Croft.”

As I set the telephone receiver back in its cradle, it rang in my hand. I picked it up.

“Mondragón Investigations,” I said.

“Mr. Croft? Do you recognize my voice?” I did, and I was surprised to hear it. It belonged to Elizabeth Drewer, the Railroad lawyer in Los Angeles.

“Yes,” I told her.

“Are you free at the moment? This is very important.”

“I'm free.”

“What time does your watch read?”

I looked. “Twelve forty-four. Thirty seconds.”

“I'll call you back in two minutes.” She hung up.

I waited, wondering what this was all about. Had she decided to give me Melissa Alonzo? And if so, why? Had she heard about the death of Deirdre Polk?

Exactly two minutes after she'd hung up, the telephone rang. I snatched the receiver from the cradle. “Hello?”

“Mr. Croft, leave your office as soon as you hang up. Go to the Palace Avenue entrance to your building. Someone will meet you there.”

“What's going on?”

“Hang up now, Mr. Croft. The Palace Avenue entrance.”

I hung up.

Twenty-Two

T
HE CAR WAS A FORD TAURUS
wagon, pale blue, and its front door swung open as it veered toward the curb where I stood. I stepped in, pulled the door shut. The car took off, not quickly, but not slowly either.

The driver was in his late twenties. He had brown hair that hung in bangs across his forehead, brown eyes, a strong nose, a small mouth, a chin that in profile was somewhat less strong than the nose. He wore an unzipped dark blue down jacket, a red chamois shirt, jeans, and expensive moccasin-toed work boots. The yuppie lumberjack look. He glanced at me. “Mr. Croft?”

“Yeah.”

“I'm Larry Cooper.” He swung the car right onto Washington. “I just want to make sure we're okay, and then I'll take you where we're going.”

“Fine.”

He looked in his rearview mirror.

We drove up Washington to Paseo, turned right, took Paseo past Marcy and Palace, past the PERA building and the state capitol, riding on a long arc as the street circled the downtown area. From time to time Cooper glanced in the rearview mirror.

The air was warming up, the world was melting. Silver dripped from the trees, the black streets glistened. Cars passed us, their roofs still frosted with snow. No one in any of the cars seemed the least bit interested in the pale blue Taurus.

At St. Francis, Cooper turned north. “I think we're all right.”

“Swell,” I said.

It came out more curtly than I intended. Sudden mysterious phone calls, sudden mysterious automobile rides dodging potential surveillance—I was getting a small taste, a very small taste, of the kind of life that Melissa Alonzo and her daughter had been living for the past few months. I didn't like it.

He looked at me. “I'm sorry about all this. All this cloak and dagger stuff. But we've got to be careful.”

I didn't know what he meant by
we
—him and me, or him and someone else—but whoever he meant, he was probably right. I was the one, after all, who'd just had tap detectors installed on my telephones. “Sure,” I said. “I'm in a bad mood today. Ignore me.”

“We'll be there soon,” he said.

I nodded.

We stayed on St. Francis as it climbed up past the Picacho Hotel. Cooper eased the car into the right lane and then turned right onto the Old Taos Highway, heading back into town. I looked back over my shoulder.

No cars behind us.

So long as no one had planted a transponder in Cooper's car, he was right. We were clean.

We drove for a quarter of a mile and then he turned left, onto a narrow winding road that led downhill into a small valley wooded with the usual junipers and piñons. The road was dirt beneath the snow and the ride was bumpy. Adobe homes were scattered along the slopes. Some of them were small and modest, looking warm and snug beneath their thin layers of melting white icing. Others were large and imposing, massive buttresses and sheets of double-glazed glass swaggering through the trees.