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“What about you? Aren’t you scared?”

  He shrugged. “What good’s it gonna do? I ain’t so happy about my life I care one way or ‘nother. You know? I just don’t want my old lady to get hurt. And my kids.”

  “What actually happened on Saturday?” I said.

  “Like I tol’ you—I picked Señor Dover up and took him to the ranch. Some men come there, up from Juarez maybe. I don’ know for sure. He tol’ me they were gonna buy the house. Only I knew that wasn’t true. He just didn’ want me to worry about him. He was scared, you know? He never done nothin’ like that before. I tol’ him I wasn’t gonna let him down no matter what. I did what he said to do and pretended I didn’ know what was really happenin’. But I kept my eyes open, you know, in case they tried something.”

  “Did they try anything?”

  He shook his head. “They gave Señor Dover a suitcase. He had it with him when I took him back to the airport. He gave them some money, I think.”

  “The men Dover gave the money to—who were they?”

  “I don’ know. I never seen them before. Maybe Jerry knows.”

  “Did they see you?”

  “Yeah,” Ramirez said. “They seen me.”

  I stared at him again. He was a brave man—a good friend. And he deserved better than he was going to get.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  “I ain’t gonna say nothin’ to the cops about Señor Dover.”

  “I’m not taking you to the cops.” I pointed to the mountains. “Up there. I want to talk to Ruiz.”

  “He ain’t gonna talk to you, man. He’s young. He don’ wanna die.”

  “I’m not going to kill him. I just want to talk to him.”

  “He’s gotta gun, man.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” I said. “Now let’s go.”

  40

  THERE WAS no road—at least, none that I could see. But Ramirez drove across the open desert as if he were navigating a familiar channel. The Jeep filled quickly with dust thrown up by the tires. The dust was hot from the sun, like the sand of a beach. About ten minutes out, Ramirez pulled up in front of a talus at the base of one of the mountains to the east of Las Cruces.

  “We gotta walk from here,” he said.

  I got out and followed him up the talus, picking my way through the hot rubble of stones. When we got about fifty yards up the hillside, the ground flattened out a bit. A narrow trail was cut into the hill, wide enough for two men to walk on. It ran parallel to the desert floor, a hundred and fifty feet up. I couldn’t see where the trail led, because it snaked around the mountain into the shadow on the north face. Beneath us the desert stretched for miles. Las Cruces looked like a spot of green and adobe white from where I stood.

  “How much farther?” I asked Ramirez.

  “Not far.”

  I looked at the sun. It was about forty-five degrees above the horizon, just beginning to set for the day. I wanted to get to Ruiz before it was too dark to see what he was doing.

  I followed Ramirez down the trail, toward the north slope. We walked for almost ten minutes. Then the trail stopped and we came to a small clearing about thirty yards square, like a tiny plateau in the rock face. The clearing was surrounded by the mountain on each side. A small cabin was built into the west wall—the one facing the trail. The cabin was made of wood planks, with a corrugated tin roof and a stovepipe chimney. A trickle of woodsmoke was coming out of the chimney, grayish blue against the washed-out sky. There was one window and a door in the front of the cabin. I couldn’t see into the window because the sun was glaring off the panes.

  “You stay back,” Ramirez said. “If he sees you...”

  “I’ll stay back,” I said. “Tell him it’s Harry Stoner. He knows me.”

  Ramirez started across the clearing and I sat down in the shadow of an overhang at the end of the trail. I could see the cabin clearly from where I sat, but I doubted if Ruiz could see me in the shadows.

  I took the pistol out, cocked it, and locked it. Then I stuck it back in the holster beneath my shirt-tail.

  I watched Ramirez go in the front door. He came back out a few minutes later and waved his right arm at me to come ahead.

  “Keep your hands up, so he can see them,” he called out.

  I raised my arms and started to walk across the clearing. Something was gleaming in the sunlight in the doorway to the cabin. It wasn’t until I got close that I realized it was a rifle barrel. I hesitated for a second when I saw it, then walked up to the door. Ruiz was crouching on one knee just inside, holding the rifle on me. Ramirez was sitting on a plank bench across from the door.

  “Put the rifle away, Jerry,” I said to him.

  “How do I know that you didn’t come to kill me?” he said nervously.

  “Why would I want to kill you?”

  “To get rid of me,” he said. “Just like they got rid of Maria. So there won’t be anybody around who knew what that fucker was doing.”

  “You’re just going to have to trust me.”

  “I don’t trust nobody.” He stood up and waved the rifle barrel at me. “C’mon.”

  I stepped through the door onto the plank floor. It was hot and dark in the cabin. The place smelled like an attic. There was a wood-burning stove on the back wall, beside the bench that Ramirez was sitting on. A table by the door. A couple of ladderback chairs with broken rungs on the north wall. And a cot with a thin mattress on the south. It was a far cry from the Belle Vista Hotel.

  The kid looked like he’d had a rough time. His hair was dirty; his handsome face was ragged with a five-days’ growth of beard. His clothes smelled. He kept blinking his eyes, as if someone were shining a light in them. His eyelids were swollen and ringed with purple flesh.

  “When’s the last time you slept?” I asked him.

  “I don’t need to sleep.” He wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “I’m all right.”

  “You’re not all right,” I said. “You’re in trouble, and you know it.”

  He looked at me as if he wanted to cry.

  “Whoever killed Maria Sanchez is going to try to kill you, too.”

  “Shut up!” he said. “How do I know that you’re not one of them?” He looked wildly at Ramirez. “He could be one of them.”

  “He’s not,” Ramirez said.

  “What do you know? You stupid beaner.”

  Ruiz was clearly paranoid with fear and fatigue. After five days on the run and a few nights in that deserted cabin with nothing to think about but Maria and her son, it was inevitable. It was also scary.

  “You should have seen what they did to her,” he said with horror. “My God, my God.”

  “Who did it?”

  “Some guys. From L.A. The ones that Dover sold the dope to.”

  “There may be a way out of this, Jerry. But I’ve got to know what happened before I can help.”

  “Why?” he said with a laugh. “So you can turn me over to the cops as an accessory? You’re just trying to protect him, man. I know that. If you hadn’t gone to Maria’s house on Thursday, she wouldn’t be dead. And I wouldn’t be in this shithole.”

  I felt sick. “What are you saying?”

  “They saw you, man. What do you think I’m saying? They know you’ve been snooping around. They were following you, you asshole. They’re on to you.”

  “How did they hear about me?” I said. “Did you tell them?”

  “You think I’m crazy!” he shouted. “They’re paranoid, man. They don’t take any chances. When they thought Maria had been talking to you, they killed her. Then they came after me.”

  “Listen to me,” I said. “How did they know about me?”

  “Dover’s pal,” he said. “He told them.”

  “What pal?”

  “The one he was doing the deal with!” he shouted again. “Don’t you know anything? Big deal fucking asshole detective!”

  “Who was he doing a deal with?” I said.

  “The gu
y, man. The guy in L.A. The one who picked him up on Sunday.”

  “You didn’t pick him up on Sunday?”

  “Shit, no. He said he didn’t need me.”

  “Did you see this guy?”

  He shook his head violently. “No! How many times do I have to tell you? I heard them talking on the phone when I come to give him the key on Friday. He tells me he’s doing a favor for his buddy. That it’s gonna get him off the hook. But he has to get out of the hotel, you know, without anybody seeing him. I went along, that’s all. For a few bucks.” He started to sob. “That’s all I did, man. Get him the key and pick up his fucking car.”

  “Then why did they kill Maria?”

  “I don’t know,” he moaned. “They thought she knew something, I guess. Maybe I told her something. I don’t know.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I overheard the call. And he’s got maybe a hundred grand on his bed, for chrissake. You don’t have to be a genius, you know?”

  I turned to Ramirez. “Did Dover do any repairs on his house this year?”

  “No, señor,” he said. “We don’ have no flood this spring.”

  “So that’s where he got the money.”

  “Who the fuck cares where he got the money,” Ruiz said. “If you hadn’t shown up and started asking questions, they wouldn’t have cared. You got her killed, man. You’re gonna get me killed, too.” He looked around the room. “They probably followed you here. Didn’t they? They’re probably out there.”

  He lowered the rifle to my chest.

  “Jerry!” I shouted.

  Ramirez jumped off the bench and tackled Jerry at the waist. As they went down, I pulled the pistol from my belt. The rifle went off with a terrific bang, shaking the walls of the cabin. Dust fell from the rafters, filling the room like thick smoke. I couldn’t see anything for a second. When the dust settled, Ramirez was sitting on the floor about two feet away from me. There was blood on his shirt. Ruiz was lying next to him. The rifle was still in his hands and the barrel was pointed at his chin. The top of his head was gone above the eyes.

  “Oh, my God,” Ramirez said, staring at Ruiz. “Oh, dear Jesus!”

  He touched the blood on his shirt and threw up.

  I pulled him to his feet and pushed him out into the yard. He was weeping hysterically.

  “I killed him!” he cried. “I killed him!”

  I grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him. “Stop it!” I said.

  He worked his mouth noiselessly a couple of times.

  I glanced back at the cabin door. There was blood on the floor, flecked with pieces of fractured bone. There was no question about what had to be done.

  “Who else knows about this place?” I said to Ramirez.

  It took him a moment to answer. He wiped his nose and mouth with his shirtsleeve. “My wife,” he said. “My children.”

  “Is there a shovel in the cabin? Something to dig with?”

  He looked at me with horror. “You gonna bury him, man?”

  “Would you rather call the cops?”

  “But I killed him,” he said.

  “Don’t be a fool,” I said. “He killed himself.”

  He shook his head slowly. “It’s not true.”

  “What difference does it make?” I said. “He’s dead, and unless you want to go to prison, you’re going to help me bury him.”

  “Madre de Dios!” Ramirez said.

  I went into the cabin and dragged Ruiz out into the yard. His brains made a long smear in the dirt. Then I went back in the cabin and searched it. I found a shovel in the corner by the stove.

  “Can you clean up in there?” I said to Ramirez.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then dig.” I jabbed the spade into the hard-packed dirt.

  I went into the cabin a third time, pulled the sheets off the mattress and blotted up the blood and tissue from the cabin floor. I took the sheet out into the yard, wadded it up, and tossed it beside Ruiz’s body. Then I took a couple handfuls of dirt from the hole that Ramirez was digging and spread it over the cabin floor. The first few handfuls turned pink. But after six or seven trips, the floorboards looked the way they had before Ruiz had died. It wouldn’t have fooled a cop, but it would fool Ruiz’s wife and kids or anybody else who happened to wander into the place.

  When I went back out to the yard, Ramirez was leaning on the spade handle—knee-deep in the hole he’d dug. He was weeping again. The sunset colored his face and hands; it had turned the whole clearing a golden brown. Within another hour, it would be fully dark. I helped Ramirez out of the hole, then stepped in and dug some more. I dug for thirty minutes. By then the hole was fairly deep.

  “Take off your shirt,” I said.

  Ramirez pulled the undershirt over his head and tossed it into the hole.

  I got out of the grave and rolled Ruiz’s body into it. I threw the bloody sheet in, too.

  “When you get the car back,” I said. “Take it some place and ditch it. Someplace no one will find it. Understand?”

  He nodded. “Why do you do this, señor?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “C’mon, let’s bury him before it’s too dark to see.”

  ******

  We finished just as the sun set. I scattered some unturned dirt on the grave. It didn’t really make a difference. In a few days, it would all be covered with dust again. I left the shovel where I’d found it, in the cabin, then followed Ruiz down the trail to the talus above the desert floor. We half-slid, half-crawled down to the Jeep. When we got to the car, we sat down beside it to catch our breath.

  “What did you go to jail for, Ramirez?” I said, after a time.

  “When I was much younger, I stole something—some money from a gas station. You ever been in jail?”

  I laughed. “No. It just looks that way.”

  We got in the Jeep. Ramirez started it up and clicked on the lights. The engine thundered against the mountainside.

  “I don’ come back here no more,” Ramirez said over the roar of the motor.

  I nodded. “Maybe, that’s best.”

  We drove through the pitch dark back to the ranch. The Chevelle was parked in the yard. Ramirez’s wife was standing in the lighted doorway of the Pueblo house, wiping her hands on a dish towel. As we pulled up, she called out to her husband in Spanish. He said something back to her, then translated for me.

  “She wants to know what happened. I tol’ her everything’s O.K. We been up in the hills.”

  “Does she know about Ruiz?”

  He nodded.

  “How much does she know?”

  “Just that it’s his car. And that he’s a friend of Señor Dover.”

  “Tomorrow morning, you take that car and ditch it—like I told you. When you come back, tell her Ruiz is gone. That he took the car and left.”

  He nodded again. “What about you? What are you gonna do?”

  “Go to L.A., I guess, and find Quentin’s pal.”

  “He called somebody on Saturday. I don’ know who. Maybe it woul’ help to find out.”

  “He called from his house?”

  “He called twice—once before the men came. And once before we left for the airport.”

  “That’s a help, all right.”

  I got out of the Jeep and walked across the yard to the Mustang. Ramirez watched me from where he was sitting in the Jeep—his arms folded on top of the windscreen.

  “Senor,” he called out. “Go with God.”

  “You, too,” I said.

  I got in the car and drove back to the hotel.

  41

  THE LOBBY was crowded and my clothes and skin were covered with dirt. I walked past the front desk as quickly as I could, went up to my room, and called the valet. I didn’t know if there was any of Jerry Ruiz on my clothes or not. But I felt dirty—an under-the-skin kind of dirtiness—and I wanted the clothes cleaned. A kid came up to collect them. I handed the bundled-up jeans and shirt to him throug
h the door, then went into the john and took a good, long look at myself in the mirror.

  I ordered a bottle of Scotch from room service and spent the next hour steaming myself in the tub and drinking. Around nine-thirty I called Glendora at the Belle Vista. I was more than a little drunk.

  “It’s all coming back to roost, Frank,” I said when I got through to him.

  “Are you O.K.?” he said with concern.

  “Just great. How’d it go with Sy?”

  “I think it went all right. I’m rather a novice at these things. He asked for ten, and I gave it to him. How’d it go with you?”

  “Marvie,” I said. “Did you know that we got Maria Sanchez and her little boy killed?” He didn’t say anything. “No, I guess you didn’t know that. But it’s a fact. We got them killed. You and me and good old Quentin.”

  “How?” he said.

  “Oh, fuck, I don’t know how. How? Quentin let Jerry Ruiz know too much—sloppy planning on our boy’s part. And Jerry let Maria know. And when I came snooping around her house, the wrong people found out and killed her. Take a guess how they found out.”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “No. Take a guess.”

  “Harry,” he said. “Tell me.”

  “Someone told them about me, Frank. Someone told them I was investigating Dover’s death. Someone who was just as nervous as they were about what I might find. You see, Quentin didn’t go to New Mexico to do a deal for himself. He went there for someone else—someone in L.A. He wasn’t trying to make money on the deal; he was trying to win friends and influence people.”

  “Oh, God,” Glendora said. “Which people?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but I can make a guess.”

  “Make a guess,” he said hollowly.

  “Who had the power to keep Quentin’s career alive? At least for another thirteen weeks? Whose cooperation was absolutely essential if Quentin was to continue as head writer on ‘Phoenix’? Who had a boyfriend who was a snowbird? Who knew how to get the shit or how to point Quentin in the right direction? Who knew from the start that I was investigating Dover’s death? And who didn’t want his contacts to be jeopardized or anyone to get wind of what he and Quentin were really doing? Sound familiar, yet?”