Bag Limit (6 page)
He nodded. “Well, okay,” he said and walked around the front of the truck. There was just enough room between the left front fender and the barbed-wire highway right-of-way fence for him to squeeze through.
“You’re sure you’re going to be all right?” I called after him.
“No, but I don’t guess there’s anything you can do about that,” he said, and swung himself up into the truck. His knees still must have been jelly, because he stalled the rig three times before he managed to back it away from the fence and then judder through the loose sand to the pavement.
Tommy Portillo had owned his convenience store on Grande Avenue for seventeen years. Before that it had been a vacant lot that collected weeds, junk, and disparaging comments from the folks who wanted Posadas to be something.
Portillo bought the lot and built his store with a design that featured plastic, shiny metal, and vivid colors, reminiscent of the automobiles of the same period. For a while, the place was an optimistic reminder of what was new and stylish. After a while, it was as much of an eyesore as most old cars are.
I knew Tommy Portillo well enough that we usually stopped to chat for a few minutes when our paths crossed downtown.
Of the nine merchants in the county who owned liquor licenses, I knew of five who had sold to minors at one time or another. Sometimes it was just an ignorant or sloppy employee who made the sale. Regardless of the reason, one slap on the wrist by the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board was usually enough that even folks with gray hair found themselves carded.
Because the Handiway store was within eyesight and an easy two-block walk of Posadas High School, Tommy Portillo had lots of opportunity. But I had no reason to think that he took advantage of it.
In fact, on one occasion I’d been in his store browsing through a magazine when I overheard a heated conversation between Portillo and one of his suppliers. All the heat was from Portillo’s end as he blistered the man up one side and down the other, and then told him to “get those damn things out of my store. What the hell do you think you’re doin’? That’s just what kids need. You ought to know better.” And so on.
After the harangue died down, the salesman left mumbling to himself. I ambled up to the counter.
“Hey,” Portillo said. “I didn’t see you over there.”
“What was he trying to sell you?” I asked.
“You should see this,” he said, and reached down. “I threw it in the trash.” He straightened up and held out a vinyl sleeve, the bright red and white of a popular brand of soda.
“What’s this for?” I said, and then figured it out for myself.
“You just slide that over a can of beer, see, and the whole world thinks you’re drinkin’ soda pop.”
“Clever way to make a buck. I’d think this would be a hot seller.”
Portillo snorted. “Of course it would. That’s why they make ’em. That’s all we need, is those things out and around.”
“You mind if I keep this?”
“You just help yourself,” Portillo said.
I had kept the slick little plastic sleeve, and still had it some-where in my desk. This time, though, despite all of Tommy Portillo’s show of righteous bluster on that day, one thing was certain now: three teens had had a roaring good time for a while, and by his own admission, he’d supplied the fuel.
The clock ticked 3:15 that Saturday morning when I pulled into the parking lot of the county’s Public Safety Building and switched off the car. The Border Patrol unit was parked in the spot marked
RESERVED DA.
At least they hadn’t taken my slot. I was too tired to walk an extra step.
I was exhausted, both physically and mentally. I sat for a moment and stared at the adobe wall ahead of the car, and my own private cinema replayed the film. I had missed grabbing Matt Baca by a hairbreadth after he stumbled into me.
Somehow it reminded me of that ludicrous poster with the old biplane that had crashed into the top of the only tree in the middle of a huge field. One tree, and the pilot had found it. There had been one truck, and Matt Baca had found that, too.
I swore a single heartfelt expletive and hauled my carcass out of the car. I didn’t head for the side door, the entrance used by employees. The front door was two dozen steps closer, and didn’t require that I fumble for a key.
Three straight-backed leather chairs and a matching bench lined the foyer, with large framed photographs of former Posadas County sheriffs lined up on the wall behind them. I had refused to sit for a portrait, but Linda Real, our department photographer, had snapped a pretty good shot of me sitting at my desk, scowling at the computer screen.
I thought that the scowl was a pretty good comment, and since the photo didn’t feature the unphotogenic lower three-quarters of my body, grudgingly allowed the picture to join the rogues’ lineup.
I was startled to see Tommy Portillo sitting in the chair under my picture.
“Hello there,” I said. “Can’t sleep?”
He got to his feet, a hand reaching out to the arm of the chair for support. He reminded me of a doughnut—pasty complexion and round through the middle. If anything was worse for the waistline than long hours in a patrol car fleeing boredom, it had to be working in the very source, the mother lode, of fresh junk food.
“Who can sleep?” he said.
I knew what was on his mind. “Come on in. Let’s collapse together,” I said. He tried a little chuckle, but it didn’t work.
Behind the dispatcher’s console were the neat rows of mail slots, and I could see the bouquet of
“WHILE YOU WERE OUT”
notes taped to the lip of mine. They could wait. Before I had a chance to disappear into my office, Brent Sutherland surfaced from the conference room.
“Are Gutierrez and Bergmann in there?” I asked.
“Yes, sir. And…” He stopped when he saw Tommy Portillo in trail. “Mr. Portillo wanted to see you.”
“We’ll be in my office. Did Bob Torrez go home?”
“Yes, sir.”
I nodded and reached out a hand to usher Portillo through the door of my office. “Get comfortable,” I said. I sat down and swung my feet up on the corner of my desk, relaxing my head back against the old leather of the chair. After five slow, deep breaths, I turned my head and looked at Portillo.
He was sitting on the edge of the chair in front of my desk, hands folded between his knees, shoulders hunched, head down as if he were trying to think away an inflamed prostate.
“You’ve been listening to the scanner, eh?” I asked.
He looked up and met my gaze without flinching. He was wearing an Oakland A’s baseball cap, and I realized that I couldn’t remember ever seeing him without it. I’d have to go to a service club meeting just to find out what was under it.
“The undersheriff stopped by to see me,” he said.
“So I understand. I’d like to hear about it.”
“I told him that Baca came in around ten o’clock. That’s as close as I can estimate it.”
“And you told him that Matt Baca showed you a legal ID of some sort?” I reached into my shirt pocket and pulled out the New Mexico driver’s license that I’d retrieved from Matt Baca’s wallet. The photo showed a good-looking kid, dark and lean-featured, embarrassed to be sitting in front of a camera without quite knowing how to look tough.
Portillo watched me, and could figure out for himself what I was holding. He waited until I was finished and then reached over for the license when I extended it to him.
Frowning, he turned the plastic card this way and that, and then shook his head.
“This is not the license that Baca showed me.”
“I can’t remember which side of the bed I’m supposed to get up on most of the time,” I said gently. “After a quick glance, there isn’t a chance you could be mistaken?”
“No, I mean this isn’t the one. And I look, you know? I mean, I really do. Not just a glance.”
“All right.” I kept my tone noncommittal.
“This is the old style. Here.” He handed it back to me. “The license that Matt Baca showed me earlier tonight was the new kind.” He dug in his pocket and pulled out his own wallet, then extracted his license. “Like this. I got this on my birthday last month.” He held it up so I could see it.
“The new style,” I said, as if we didn’t deal on a routine basis with the licenses issued by the Motor Vehicle Division.
“The new ones—with all those state seals on them. They kinda shimmer, like.”
“Uh-huh.” I tapped Matt Baca’s license against my thumb. “He showed you a brand-new license. That’s what you’re saying?”
Portillo nodded. “That’s why I came in. First, the undersheriff stopped to talk to me…I guess it was about midnight. And then later I heard about…” He let it trail off with a helpless wave of his hand. “When I talked to Torrez, you didn’t have the kid in custody yet, is that right?”
I nodded.
“When I heard about what happened, I knew that you guys would be wanting to talk to me again. But believe me—if I’d thought that Matt Baca was underage, I wouldn’t have sold him the liquor.” He shrugged helplessly. “I just wouldn’t. I wanted to come in and tell you that.”
“That’s thoughtful of you,” I said. “Did you happen to notice his date of birth?”
“I remember that it was before this date in 1980. You know, that’s how we do it. Just has to be before…” He let it drift off, realizing that he was lugging coals to Newcastle.
“But you don’t remember the year that was on the license?”
“No. Seems to me that it was ’79. I don’t remember for sure. I mean it was close to that, but as long as it’s before 1980 what’s the point of paying attention, if you know what I mean.”
“Did you happen to notice the date of issue?”
“Date of issue?”
“It’s on the license, in small print.”
“I didn’t notice that, no.”
“It had his picture, though?”
“Yes.”
“Same one as this?” I held up Baca’s license.
Tommy Portillo leaned close and squinted. “No.” He settled back in the chair. “It wasn’t the same picture.”
“You’re sure.”
“Yes.”
“Huh,” I said, and leaned my head back against the chair again. “That’s something to go on, anyway.”
“I just wanted you to know. It was nagging at me, you know? You know how that goes?”
“Oh, yeah. I know how that goes.”
“I think maybe I can go home now and get some sleep.”
“I appreciate this, Tommy. I really do. We may want to talk to you again.”
“Anytime, Bill. Just anytime.”
After he left, I put Matt Baca’s license back in the small, tagged evidence bag. My intuition told me that Tommy Portillo was telling the truth. He had good reason to make any attempt to cover his ass, especially now, with a fatality involved—however tangentially.
A second license explained the boy’s reaching for ID in the Broken Spur. If Tommy Portillo was correct, Matt Baca had been about to show the bartender his freshly minted license. Victor Sanchez stopped the game before it had even begun.
Victor was no threat to Baca—he might not honor the bogus license, but he wouldn’t report the kid, either. The kid was free to go elsewhere. It made sense that he’d head for home, where Sosimo was known to keep a bottle or two. But when the red lights blossomed as the trio left the Broken Spur, Matt Baca had reason to run. His cousin, the undersheriff of Posadas County, knew exactly how old he was.
Having the fake license was one thing. Explaining where he got it was another story entirely.
I spent a couple of hours drafting my own written explanation of the night’s events. It was a simple enough incident, and ordinary circumstances would have required just a few minutes to whack out the necessary paragraphs of the deposition, beginning with the collision of Matt Baca’s car and my own.
“Ordinary circumstances” would have been if the incident had happened to someone else. As it was, I lingered over every sentence, letting my mind search and sift, looking for something that might strike a spark. I knew exactly why the kid had been mangled by the delivery truck. He was fast, I was slow. It was that painfully simple. Discovering why he’d decided to run in the first place wasn’t so simple.
Later in the morning, one of the deputies would have the chance to talk at length with Jessie Montoya, the young lady in the backseat. And maybe Toby Gordan would be able to mumble a few words past his stitches. The rules of the game had changed since I’d last seen those two kids—there was no need now for them to worry about protecting Matt Baca, or even saving face in front of their friend.
Whether or not Matt had told them where he got the license was another question. I was confident that he had, since humans are notoriously blabby when they’ve done something stupid of which they’re inordinately proud. I was sure that if Toby or Jessie knew, they’d tell us.
Shortly after five that Saturday morning, I finished the affidavit and walked out to dispatch. The deep, predawn hush included the Public Safety Building. Gutierrez and Bergmann, the two Border Patrol agents, had long since left, Deputy Taber was somewhere in the county prowling the shadows, and dispatcher Brent Sutherland was trying his best to remain alert as the adrenaline rush from earlier in the night wore off.
“Dig out your seal, would you?” I asked, and Brent looked grateful for something to do and eager for an excuse to use his freshly minted Notary Public commission. A few minutes later, as I slid the notarized statement into Taber’s mailbox, I said, “I’m going home, Brent.” At the same time, I leafed through the messages taped above my name…the same messages I’d ignored earlier and that were now stale as day-old toast.
One didn’t require a response, and a second recorded that Cliff Larson, the district livestock inspector, had called at 9:30 Friday evening. “What did Cliff want, did he say?”
“No, sir. He said that it could wait until today sometime. I gave him your cell phone number, but I guess he didn’t call.”
“I guess not. And Frank?” Frank Dayan, the publisher of the
Posadas Register
, had called shortly after 10:00
PM
—a good hour before all the action started. No doubt Frank would be gnashing his teeth that we’d been inconsiderate enough to make important news a week before his next issue hit the street. A central joy in his life was beating the big-city dailies to the hot stuff. I was sure that most of the time, the metro papers didn’t know they’d been scooped…or care.
“He didn’t say, sir. Just that it wasn’t important.”
“Huh,” I grunted. “If it’s not important, why do these people pick up the phone in the first place. One of the mysteries of life, I suppose.” The fourth note, recorded in Brent Sutherland’s careful printing, said that Dan Schroeder, the district attorney, had called from his home in Deming at 2:55
AM
to tell me that a meeting at 9:00
AM
was just fine with him.
“The DA doesn’t waste any time, does he?” I muttered.
“Sir?”
I waved the note. “The DA.”
Sutherland looked a bit uncomfortable. “The undersheriff said I should call him because of the fatality,” he said. “Because it involved us.”
“Not
us
,” I said laconically. “
Me
. And both you and the undersheriff did the right thing, and nine
AM
is just fine.” I crumpled the note and chucked it in the trash basket. “Like I said, I’m going home for a couple of hours. Is there another vehicle handy? I’ll try my best to keep it in one piece.”
I ended up taking the keys to 306, the Bronco that Deputy Tom Pasquale drove most of the time.
The breeze outside had freshened, driving the November chill down into the town from the San Cristóbal Mountains. It was the tonic I needed before meeting with the district attorney. If I went home and fell asleep, I’d wake groggy and unkempt for a meeting where Schroeder would expect me to be sharp and cogent.
The better strategy was a good, solid breakfast with enough strong coffee to see me through the morning. Then, after the DA was satisfied, I could go home and crash.
I bounced the stiffly sprung truck out of the parking lot and turned west on Bustos. The Don Juan de Oñate Restaurant opened at six, but I knew that the owners were there early and the side door would be unlocked.
I slowed at the intersection with Grande when I saw the aging pickup truck stop for the northbound light. Cranking the wheel hard, I turned south and then braked to a halt right in the middle of the intersection. Bob Torrez rolled his truck forward until we were window to window.
“I was going to get some breakfast,” I said. “Join me. My treat.”
“I thought of something that I wanted to ask you,” the undersheriff said without preamble. Not many words were wasted in the Torrez household, I had decided long ago. I wondered what constituted small talk when Bob and his wife Gayle were feeling blabby.
“Over a burrito,” I said. “Ask me anything over a smothered burrito.” A car emerged from one of the side streets to the west, and turned away from us. “And don’t tell me you’ve already had breakfast. Gayle’s not about to get up at this hour, and the only time you ever cook is over a campfire.”
“Now that’s true,” Torrez said, and the grin was a welcome break in what was otherwise a pretty gloomy face. “I’ll follow you.”
I nodded and continued my circle through the intersection. With a belch of smoke, Torrez’s pickup fell in behind. As an unmarked vehicle, his truck would certainly fool somebody once. Mostly flat black mixed with a little gray primer here and there, the old Chevy was a monstrosity. There was enough junk in the back, behind the ornamental iron scrollwork that protected the back window, that the rig must have weighed three or four tons.
The front door of the Don Juan was open, but I paused with my hand on the handle, regarding a large, neatly printed sign. When Torrez joined me, I said, “What’s with this?”
Rather than hasty black marker, someone had taken the time to letter the sign in beautifully decorated calligraphy.
The Don Juan de Oñate will be closed
all day Nov. 7.
We will reopen Nov. 8 at our usual time.
He shrugged. “No liquor sales that day anyway until the polls close at seven. Fernando must have decided to take a vacation.”
“Fine timing.” I pulled open the door. “Where are we supposed to celebrate your win?”
Torrez caught the door and followed me inside. “At home, maybe?”
I led the way around various dividers, tables, and the empty salad bar unit and settled in the third booth from the back, where the window faced the parking lot and a fine view to the west. When I slid all the way into the booth, I could see the alcove of the front door.
Arleen Aragon, the owners’ daughter-in-law, appeared around the divider. “Hey, you guys,” she said. In one sweeping move of her right hand she collected two mugs, and with her left hefted the full coffee carafe.
“Some night, huh,” she said as she clunked the two cups down on the table in front of us. Apparently everyone in the world had a scanner tuned to the Posadas County hit parade. Or maybe she’d just overprepped the hash browns, blackening the edges. I didn’t pursue what she meant.
“I guess,” I said. Arleen filled the cups within a hairbreadth of the rims and started to turn away.
“Neither of you take cream, right?”
I shook my head.
“Breakfast?”
I nodded. She replaced the coffeepot and returned to stand with her hands on her ample hips. “You, I can already guess,” she said, looking at me. “Burrito Grande green, extra smothered, sour cream on the side.”
“Perfect.”
“How about you, Bobby?”
The undersheriff took a deep breath. “I don’t know how hungry I am,” he said, and started to reach for a menu.
“You gotta eat,” Arleen said. “That’s the number one rule around here. A burrito would do you good. It looks like that wife of yours is starvin’ you.” At six-four and 230 pounds, Robert Torrez wasn’t my idea of undernourished.
Torrez retreated from the menu. “All right,” he said. “The same.”
“Except no sour cream, right?”
Torrez grinned. “Right.”
“I didn’t think that you liked that gringo stuff,” she said, and punched me on the left arm. “It’ll be a few minutes,” she added. “You kinda caught us before the normal breakfast rush.”
When she had gone, I took a long sip of the coffee and then said, “You heard about the nine o’clock meeting with Schroeder?”
Torrez nodded. “I told Brent to give him a call. I didn’t want the DA hearing it from some other source.”
“Have you been out to see the old man?” Sosimo Baca was ten years younger than I was, but his love of alcohol in any form as long as it was in quantity had his family counting Sosimo’s birthdays in dog years.
“I went out about four or a little bit before. I woke up Father Anselmo and had him go along.” Torrez grimaced. “Father said he’d been expecting something like this for a long time. He calls Matt
el cachorro impetuoso
. ”
“Meaning?”
“A wild pup. Roughly.”
“And when you two went to Baca’s, are you sure that Sosimo understood what you were talking about?”
“It appeared so. I made sure that the two girls were awake, too, just to be sure. Sosimo still smelled like a brewery, but the kids understood. I tried to keep it simple.” Torrez paused and took a deep breath. “I said that apparently Matt had kicked out a window in the patrol car, and that during the process of transferring him to another unit, he bolted into the path of traffic.” He shrugged. “Father Anselmo was still talking to them when I left. Matt’s two sisters seemed to take it all right. Maybe with enough coffee in him, Sosimo will be able to understand what happened. By noon or so. I was planning to go back down in a little bit.” He glanced at his watch. “Talk to my uncle again. I’d like to look through Matt’s private stash and see what I can find.”
“Want me to come along?”
“That’s not necessary.”
I leaned forward and lowered my voice so that the coffee urn wouldn’t hear me.
“I’ve been playing this thing over and over in my mind. I can’t get a handle on it.”
Torrez shook his head. “From what Gutierrez and Bergmann told me, there wasn’t much you could do. Not much anyone could have done.”
I waved a hand in dismissal. “I don’t mean that. Sure, if I’d been a bit quicker, I could have grabbed him. Hell, so what. If that had happened, maybe he’d have dragged both of us in front of that truck…and then I’d really be pissed. No”—and I shook my head—“that part I can live with, all right. What I don’t understand is his determination, Robert.”
“How do you mean?”
“On the highway, as soon as you turn on the red lights, he runs. Up on the hill, he crashes into me, and then takes off into the trees. All right, I can understand that. He’s scared, as any stupid kid would be. He knows that if you catch him, you’re probably going to beat the crap out of him. At least he
thinks
that you are. And maybe the fact that he stumbled on home, right where you knew he’d be, just goes to show how really drunk he was.”
“He couldn’t have wanted to get away very badly,” Torrez said. “Unless he was just too sloshed to know better.”
“Right. So we chalk up the first episodes to being young, stupid, and drunk. I come in and slap the cuffs on him. He’s had a couple or three hours to sleep, and some of the booze has worn off. He should be able to put two and two together, with a little fresh air to help wake him up.”
“And instead, he kicks out the window.”
“Right. Now what’s that going to gain him?”
Torrez pushed his coffee to one side. “Nothing, but he doesn’t know that.”
“What, he thinks that I’m going to stop the car, and he’s going to have a chance to run off into the night again? In the middle of nowhere, with handcuffs on?”
Torrez shrugged. “We don’t know what he was thinking. But that’s exactly what he did. Or tried to do.”
“Well, it’s true. We don’t know what he was thinking. But regardless of what his addled little brain was concocting, wouldn’t you think he’d put it all on hold when two Border Patrol cops show up? I mean, I’m old and fat, and I know it. And Matthew knew it too. But Gutierrez and Bergmann aren’t. So why did he pick that time to bolt?”
With his elbows on the table, Bob Torrez folded his hands together as a support for his chin. He thought for a long time, his gaze taking in the dimly-lit details of the room. About the time my impatience was about to prompt me to ask if he’d forgotten the question, he said, “I don’t think it was a rational thing.”
“I’ll agree to that. But it was a
desperate
thing, Roberto. And there has to be a reason. Why would seeing a couple of Border Patrol agents trigger that reaction?”
“We don’t know that’s what triggered it, sir.”
“No, we don’t. I never mentioned them. If he was listening, all he heard was my call to Sutherland, to tell him I was inbound.”
Arleen Aragon appeared with two generously heaped plates billowing steam and fragrance.
“That’s some breakfast burrito,” Bob said, and leaned back while Arleen coasted the platter in for a landing.
“That’s our dinner burrito,” Arleen corrected. “The sheriff doesn’t do those dinky little things on the breakfast menu.” The second plate landed in front of me with a heavy thud. “It’s hot, so be careful.”
“Brain food,” I said. “Maybe something will occur to me.”
“When he sobers up, Sosimo might have some answers,” Torrez said.
“Don’t hold your breath.”