The Sinister Pig - 15 (15 page)

“I think you keep the old, old maps you no longer look at but are too stubborn to throw away in that big cardboard box on the shelf in the garage,” Louisa said. “And since you’re already all dusty from hunting whatever you lost in the car I’ll let you climb up and get it down yourself.”

Winsor’s trip to solve the Mexican end of his problem took many preparations. He called his man at the bank and sent Budge down with a check and a note, thereby withdrawing a bundle of Mexican currency to have with him in case it was needed on the border or in Sonora. He made a call to his congressman’s office to get the doer of helpful deeds there to ease the way with Customs officials and set things up for Budge to get international flight permissions cleared for his Dessault Falcon 10 to enter and leave Mexico. With competent assistants on call, political clout, and deep pockets, he had no problems getting such jobs rapidly accomplished. First stop would be El Paso, where he’d told his Mexican lawyer to meet him. His next stop would depend on what he learned in that conversation.

Meanwhile, he would spend the flight time improving his understanding of Budge. The competence with which [142] Budge had dealt with Chrissy hadn’t surprised him. But the coolness of the man and his utter confidence in himself had suggested to Winsor that there was a depth to Budge he hadn’t expected. Before long he expected Chrissy’s many girlfriends and her family would be wondering what happened, why no one was answering her telephone, why his own secretary didn’t know why she wasn’t showing up for work, why her professors out at the university law school knew nothing at all. Pretty soon her family would report her missing, he’d be getting questions. The police would be making inquiries.

Chrissy’s family were Italian immigrants operating a string of restaurants. They had political connections in their state. They weren’t the sort he wanted to socialize with in Washington or New York, but they were useful with one senator and three of their state’s congressmen. That meant almost certainly the Washington police would be on the hunt, probably the FBI as well. He had worried about that. Braced himself for unpleasantness. But Budge had worked it out so that the story left behind would be too simple to interest either the press or the police. She had called for the limo, told Budge she had to go to the airport, he had taken her there, left her off at her airline’s terminal as she requested, and come home. And thus Chrissy, and the threat she represented, had vanished without a trace. Budge had left absolutely nothing for police or press to find. A real cool professional at work.

Winsor found himself thinking of this immigrant Latino as a man of his own class, just as he thought of the top people with whom he dined, and partied, and competed with in the economic and political world. That sort of thinking surprised him. He never felt that way about [143] his employees. On one level, he felt good about this. On another, it made him uneasy. It undercut his trust. He no longer felt totally safe in presuming, as he had been doing, that Budge was simply a highly competent lackey, happy to be serving in a job that paid him well. Now Budge seemed more than that. Perhaps he wasn’t—as Haret had always seemed to be—one of those little suckerfish that connects itself to sharks. Maybe Budge had his own predatory talents. Worse, maybe Budge had his own personal agenda.

At the airport he found Budge waiting in the lounge for private aircraft crews. He was reading a magazine, looking comfortable.

“We’ll probably have to spend a night or two out where we won’t find hotel accommodations,” Winsor said. “Are you prepared for that?”

“Always am,” Budge said. “Bed roll in the storage space and some U.S. Army canned rations. How about you? Will I be sharing my food?”

“I’ll make other arrangements,” Winsor said. “I’ll be meeting some associates.”

Budge considered that, nodded.

“I’ll sit up front with you,” he told Budge as they boarded the jet. “I want to talk to you.”

“Why?” Budge asked.

“Just curious,” Winsor said. “I’m paying your salary. I’m putting some confidence in you. So I need to know more about you.”

“You know the rule,” Budge said. “Passengers will please refrain from talking to the driver.”

“I make the rules,” Winsor said.

Budge studied him, expressionless. He nodded.[144] “When we get to altitude and we get into the flight pattern, then we will talk,” he said. “Until then, I’ll be talking only to the tower. You can listen.”

Judging from what Winsor was seeing of the landscape, they were over West Virginia before Budge turned toward him.- “All right. Now what do you want to know.”

“We could start with your biography,” Winsor said. “All I know about you is what the congressman told me. You flew for the government in that messy rebellion in Guatemala. You got in some sort of trouble. You had connections in the CIA down there and they got you to Washington. That about right?”

Budge considered, said: “That’s about it.”

“I’m not even sure I know your real name. ‘Robert Budge’ doesn’t sound like you. That doesn’t seem to fit what you look like.”

Budge thought about this. “That does sound a little pale for me, I guess. How about Sylvanius Roberto C. de Baca. That sound right?”

“ ‘Sylvanius’? That sounds Greek. But that ‘C. de Baca’ sounds Spanish.”

“It is Spanish,” Budge said. “Or technically Basque, I guess. It’s my father’s name. He was one of those freedom fighters who gave Franco and his fascists troubles.”

“What’s the ‘C’? Maybe Carlos?”

“ ‘C’ is short for ‘Cabeza.’ Cabeza de Baca.”

“I had a high school course in Spanish. Doesn’t
cabeza
mean ‘head’? Is that ‘Head of Baca’?” Winsor snorted. “And ‘Baca.’ What’s that? Come on, Budge, get with it. I don’t have time to play games with you.”

[145] “When you studied Spanish, they didn’t get into history much, I guess. Anyway, back in the fifteenth century, when the Castilians were fighting that long civil war to drive the Moors out of Spain, the king gave my family that name. A grandfather of mine, six centuries removed, led a scouting party to find a way the Spanish army”—Budge paused, looked at Winsor—“you familiar with Spanish geography, lay of the land?”

Winsor felt himself flushing. He wasn’t accustomed to this.

“I’ve never had a reason to be,” he said.

“I’ll make it simple then. He found a way for the army of the king to get a column of cavalry across a river where they could outflank the Moors. That won the war for our side. According to the legend, my ancestor marked the ford with the skull of a cow stuck up on the end of a pole. After the Moors surrendered, the king had a ceremonial banquet in the palace and made this very distant granddad of mine Duke of Cabeza de Baca.”

Winsor laughed. “Maybe they ate the beef from the historic baca’s cabeza.”

Budge cut off what he was about to say to that, paused, adjusted something on the instrument panel.

“That was fourteen hundred and thirteen. Long, long ago,” he said, and laughed. “About when the early Winsors would have still been gathering roots and berries, eating with their fingers and killing each other with clubs.”

Winsor took a deep breath, held it, and stared out the windshield. “Interesting,” he said after a long silence. “About all I know about the Spanish culture is from Cervante’s novels, and the plays the Spanish dramatists were writing about that time and the stuff we got in the world lit [146]classes at Harvard. Now, tell me what brought the Cabeza de Baca family to the Americas.”

“Spirit of adventure. Lust for gold. Hard times in Europe. The same old story. I think my ancestors had a habit of being on the wrong side of too many political battles.”

“What did you do for the CIA?” Winsor’s question produced a long silence.

“One thing I would have been required to do, if I ever did work for the Central Intelligence Agency, was put my hand on a Bible and take an oath of secrecy. So if I did that, I can’t talk about it. And if I didn’t do that, then there’d be nothing to tell you. Right?”

A long silence ensued.

“When we get about an hour from El Paso, I’m making some calls,” Winsor said. “You take care of dealing with getting my plane parked. I’ll meet a man I need to talk to at the administration building. You brought your cell phone?”

“Always. And the pager.”

“Stay close to the plane. I’ll call you when I need you.”

“Sure,” Budge said.

They crossed the American midlands in silence. Over the flatness of West Texas Winsor extracted his cell phone and dialed. He waited, looking impatient.

“Ruben? ... Yes, yes. Did our lawyer show up? ... Yes, at the airport. You talk to the people at Rancho Corralitos? ... Yes ... yes, but that means the stuff hasn’t actually arrived there yet. ... True? But when? ... That sounds all right. But you make damn sure nothing holds it up. Tell me how you’re checking on it.”

[147] The answer to that took time. Winsor glanced at Budge, who seemed to be absorbed with reading his instrument panel.

“All right then. But call me as soon as it’s there. And I’m thinking now that we’ll be coming right on in from El Paso this afternoon. Make damn sure that landing strip is cleaned off better than it was the last time. And I’ll probably have to spend the night. Where we’re going next we can’t land in the dark. And did those Corralitos people have anything new to say about that woman?”

A brief pause. “What woman? The snoopy Navajo gal that was nosing around at the Pig Trap site, taking pictures. We had her picture spread around.”

Winsor listened. Said: “Son of a bitch! Did you ask Ed Henry about that?” Listened again. Shook his head, said: “How did Henry know the man was a Navajo.” Said: “I mean, how did he know he was a Navajo Tribal Police cop. They don’t have any jurisdiction down there. None at all.” He listened again, said: “All right,” and clicked off without saying good-bye. He put the phone back in his jacket pocket and glanced at Budge.

“You need to be ready to fly on to the smelter. Take care of refueling if you need to, as soon as we get landed.”

Budge nodded.

“We need to get there before dark,” Budge said. “I’m not going to fly in on that strip by starlight.”

While he was saying that, Winsor was staring at him, expression thoughtful.

“Budge,” he said. “You sort of enjoyed that assignment I gave you with Chrissy, didn’t you? I mean, manhandling that pretty little girl like that.”

[148] Budge kept his eyes on the instrument panel, shrugged.

“I think I’m going to have another one of those for you,” Winsor said.

Budge considered that a moment. “Who?”

Winsor chuckled. “It may not be so easy this time. She’s some sort of cop.”

The young woman who answered Leaphorn’s call to Jim Chee’s Shiprock office recognized neither his voice nor his name, making him aware of the passage of time, how old he was getting, how long he had been retired, how quickly one is forgotten, and other sad truths. But when he identified himself more clearly and told her the call was important, she said that while Sergeant Chee had indeed left for the day and wasn’t in his office, he still might be out in the parking lot. She went out to see.

A minute later, Chee was on the phone and asking what was up.

“Get comfortable, Jim,” Leaphorn said. “This takes a while to tell.”

Being Leaphorn, he had his thoughts about as well organized as this peculiar and disconnected affair allowed. He started with Mrs. Garza’s call.

“I think we know from the photo Henry took of Bernie Manuelito that all is not totally well with Customs [150] operations down there,” Leaphorn said. “How else would the photograph get into the hands of the drug people down in Sonora? But why would they consider Miss Manuelito dangerous? It seems obvious, at least to me, that it had to do with her photographing whatever they’re building on the Tuttle Ranch. What do you think about it?”

“I don’t have any ideas,” Chee said. “I’m going down there and get her out of it.”

Leaphorn laughed. “Better take along a court order and your handcuffs. It always seemed to me that Bernie Manuelito pretty much made her own decisions.”