"The big gamble" - читать интересную книгу автора (McGarrity Michael)

MONTOYA'S COUSIN KILLED OUTSIDE DENVER CLUB OWNED BY TULLY.

"Three different companies incorporated as Five Players, Five Stars, and Five Partners," Kerney said. He tore off the sheet of newsprint and taped it to the wall. "Tully, Bedlow, and Norvell. Who are the other two?"

"Silva and Barrett attended Tully's grand opening in Albuquerque," Vialpando said.

"Okay, they're possibles," Kerney said.

"And what about Luis Rojas, the ex-college jock?" Ramona asked.

"We know nothing about him yet," Kerney said, shifting his gaze to Helen Muiz. "Let's start a things-to-do list, Helen. Personal and business background checks on Silva and Barrett. Locate Rojas and do the same."

He returned to his chair while the officers stared at the list on the wall.

"If Norvell killed Montoya to keep her from exposing him, you've got motive, Chief," Vialpando said. "But what about opportunity? Can you place him in Santa Fe at the time of the murder?"

"Or at Tully's Denver club, the night Belinda Nieto was killed?" Ramona added.

"That's two more things to do," Kerney said, nodding at Helen, who was already writing them down.

"I'll ask Denver PD for their crime-scene witness list," Molina said.

"I'll check Norvell's travel reimbursement records with the state," Kerney said. "Can you free up a detective to run down information on Barrett's and Silva's businesses?" he asked Molina.

"Can do," Molina replied, "and I'll cover Luis Rojas."

"Okay," Kerney said. "From what Detective Pino and Sergeant Vialpando have said, I'm inclined to assume that Norvell, Tully, and Bedlow have been operating a vice ring for the last twenty years. It's likely they have at least two more partners. We've got potential informants in the Greer woman and the photographer, Deacon."

Kerney stared at Pino and Vialpando. "How do you two want to proceed with them?" he asked.

"I've made a date with Greer for tonight through her Web site," Vialpando said. "We've got a room booked at an expensive hotel. We'll videotape the transaction, bust her, and see where it takes us."

"Don't have too much fun before the bust," Ramona said.

Vialpando leaned close to Pino and gave her a big smile. "I wouldn't think of it."

Ramona grinned back.

"And Deacon?" Kerney asked, interrupting the by-play.

"He's mine," Ramona said, turning off her smile. "I called and asked him to make some enlargements of the pictures he took. I'm picking them up this evening. Maybe he'll be stoned enough to let down his guard."

"I'd like to see those pictures," Vialpando said.

"Not a chance," Ramona replied.

"Can you give Detective Pino backup at Deacon's?" Kerney asked Vialpando.

"It's already arranged."

"Very good," Kerney said.

"I'd like to use Detective Pino undercover at Tully's club, Chief," Vialpando said.

"I haven't forgotten your request, Sergeant, and I'm willing to go along with it, if needed. You've been very helpful to us, and I appreciate it. But let's see how far we get before Ramona has to start her new job."

Kerney pushed his chair back. "I want reports from everybody ASAP. I'll be at home tonight. Call me there."

All except Helen Muiz left the room. She stood up, handed Kerney the to-do list, and said, "I think those two young people like each other."

"I noticed that," Kerney replied.

"Well I hope they do a better job hiding it when they're undercover."

Helen left the room laughing.

Getting lost in El Paso put Clayton in a foul mood. What looked so easy to get to on a street map wound up being a series of false starts, wrong turns, and wasted time parked at the side of roads trying to figure out where in the hell he was. He did a lot better at finding his way in the mountains and forests on the rez than in the concrete and asphalt of cities.

Finally, he made it to the Upper Valley, a suburban strip of land on the west side of El Paso that bordered the Rio Grande. He drove through wide streets lined with shade trees, passing newer two-story homes, looking for the right turnoff. Here and there along the road were old farmhouses, some irrigation canals, and patches of agricultural land that had not yet given way to the sprawl.

Deborah Shea, the girlfriend who'd been so conveniently present at Rojas's house, no longer lived at the address listed on her driver's license. Clayton got the story from the current owner, an older, retired army major who actually thought cops were the good guys. He pulled out a mortgage settlement statement which showed that the seller of the house had been Big Five Trucking, Inc., Rojas's company.

"I don't know this woman you're looking for," the man said. "The house was vacant when we bought it."

Clayton checked the closing date for the sale of the house against the issue date he'd recorded from Shea's driver's license. She'd used the address to renew her license six months after the new owner had moved in.

Clayton wondered if Deborah Shea had ever even lived in the house, and went looking for neighbors who might know. According to one woman, a home owner on the same street, the house had been built six years ago and a Hispanic family lived there prior to the retired army major moving in.

"Were there any other occupants?" Clayton asked, trying not to stare at the woman's tinted and wildly curled hairdo that probably cost a hundred bucks a pop every time she went to the beauty parlor. He'd never known Apache women to do such strange things to their hair, and it had nothing to do with money.

The woman, whose husband ran a maquiladora in Juarez, shook her head. "No, it was just Tony, Martha, and the children."

"How well did you know them?" Clayton asked.

"They were nice people who always came to the annual neighborhood potluck parties. The children were polite and well behaved. Other than that, they didn't do a lot of socializing. The kids kept them too busy."

Clayton rephrased his question: "What do you know about them?"

"Tony worked for a trucking company. He had a management position of some sort."

"Big Five Trucking?"

"Yes, I think that's it. Martha was a stay-at-home mom."

Clayton thanked the woman, left, and kept looking for Deborah Shea. She wasn't listed in the phone book or in the several recent city directories he examined at a branch library. He tried a long shot at a motor vehicle office, hoping that Shea had reported an address change, and struck out.

"Can you search your database of licensed drivers by address?" Clayton asked the office manager.

"You bet," the manager said, turning to his keyboard.

"How far back do you want to go?"

"Six years."

The man pulled up the data on his computer screen and printed out the information. The retired army officer, his wife, former occupants Tony and Martha Duran, and Deborah Shea topped the list. But another eight people, all young females, had also used the address to get licenses at one time or another.

"What is this address, an apartment or something?" the manager asked. "A group home? A sorority house?"

"None of the above," Clayton replied. "It's a single-family house."

"That's unreal. What's going on?"

"I'm not sure," Clayton said, handing the list back to the manager. "Can I have hard copies of the license information for each of those drivers?"

"Sure thing."

Clayton took the information to the El Paso police headquarters and got a desk officer to cross-check all the names with computerized arrest records. Two of the women had rap sheets of one count each, for soliciting. The officer escorted Clayton to a vice-squad cop and introduced him as Detective Brewer. He was an older, soft-bellied man with a passive face who wore a shirt with a cigarette-ash burn in the pocket. His breath stank of nicotine.

Brewer pulled the offense reports on the women. Both had been busted at an El Paso hotel.

"What were the case dispositions?" Clayton asked.

It took a minute for Brewer to ferret out the notations. "Both paid fines," he said.

"Where can I find them?" Clayton asked.

"Hell if I know," Brewer said. "They haven't been seen in town for over a year, maybe two. Whores move around a lot these days, one city to the next."

"What about their pimps?"

"There's nothing in the files about that."

Brewer didn't seem particularly eager to help, and his attitude bothered Clayton. He stuck Deborah Shea's motor vehicle photograph under the man's nose. "Do you know this woman?"

Brewer shook his head.

"How about Luis Rojas?"

"I don't know any Luis Rojas who's working girls in El Paso," the detective said.

One by one, Clayton fed Brewer all the driver's license photographs to review.

"Except for the two whores, I don't know any of these women," Brewer said, handing them back.

Although he didn't mean it, Clayton said, "Thanks."

Brewer nodded, watched the Indian cop leave, and dialed a private number. "Tell Mr. Rojas I need to talk to him," he said to the kid who answered the phone.

"Call back at six," Fidel said. "He'll be here then."

The deputy's report on the Norvell DWI stop identified the passenger in the car as Helen Pearson, and gave a rural route address. The phone book carried no listing, so Kerney called the post office and learned that Pearson now had a postal box. The application listed her permanent residence on a road off the Old Santa Fe Trail, just outside the city limits. It was a high-end neighborhood with big houses on large hillside view lots.

Kerney drove to the address. No one answered his knock at the main house, but two cars were parked in front of a large detached studio. A sign over the door read BUCKAROO DESIGNS.

Inside, two Hispanic women were working at sewing machines, and an Anglo woman was pinning pattern paper to some fabric at a large worktable in the center of the room. Racks of custom cowboy shirts, embroidered blue jeans, western-style dresses, and fringed jackets were lined up along a back wall. Bolts of fabric were neatly arranged on floor-to-ceiling shelves. Scraps of cloth littered the floor.

The Anglo woman looked up, set aside a pincushion, and crossed the room. About forty, she had brown hair cut short, delicate features, and wore no makeup other than lipstick. The face of a film actress flashed across Kerney's mind, but he couldn't put a name to it.

"Helen Pearson?" he asked.

"That's me," the woman replied cheerily.

Kerney showed Pearson his shield and her smile faded. "What is it?"

"I've a few questions about Tyler Norvell."

Pearson broke off eye contact and her voice rose. "What kind of questions?"

"You do know him?" Kerney asked, keeping an agreeable look on his face.

"Past tense," Pearson said. "I haven't seen him in many years."

The palpable tension in Pearson's body made Kerney want to probe more. But the shut-down look in her eyes argued against it. He moved off subject. "This is quite the enterprise you've got going," he said, looking around the studio. "How long have you been in business?"

"Eight years," Pearson said, still frowning.

Pearson wore a plain gold band on the ring finger of her left hand. "Do you run the business with your husband?" Kerney asked.

She glanced at the ring as though it had betrayed her. "No, he's a landscape architect."

On a bulletin board behind a nearby desk were crayon drawings signed by Melissa and Stephen. "Do you have children?" Kerney asked.

Pearson's tension rose again. Her hand fluttered to her neck and her eyes looked frightened. "Why are you asking me all these things?"

"How long have you been married?" Kerney asked.

"Stop it," Pearson hissed. She turned away to glance at the two women. "Why are you questioning me like this?" she whispered.

"Would you be more comfortable if we talked outside?"

Pearson nodded stiffly, her eyes dark with worry. She walked through the open door and led Kerney a good distance away from the studio.

Pearson had reacted to Kerney's innocuous questions in a way that made him believe she was hiding something. A straight-out lie just might shake it loose. "I know you worked for Norvell," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"Do I really need to be more graphic? I'll put it another way: Norvell pimped for you."

Pearson trembled, hugged herself, and said nothing.

Kerney stepped in closer. Pearson backed up. "It looks like you've built a new life for yourself," he said. "Talking to me doesn't have to ruin it."

She laughed, harshly, shallowly. "Oh, so you're the good cop, right?"

"Or the bad cop," Kerney replied, "depending on how you want to play it."

"What would the bad cop do?" she asked, struggling for composure.

"You have a husband, children, a thriving business, a reputation, new friends…"

Pearson finished Kerney's thought. "Do I want them to know I was once a whore, a hooker, a prostitute?" The words spilled out of her.

"Something like that."

She caved, lost her poise, buried her head in her hands. Kerney stayed back and let her cry. She forced herself to straighten up, composed her face, and spread her arms wide, as if to embrace the hilltop house, the views of the mountains in the distance, her reinvented, respectable life.

"If I hadn't done what I did, I would have none of this," Pearson said. "Can you understand that?"

Kerney nodded.

"How can you possibly protect me?"

"When the time comes, I'll ask the DA to have you appear before a grand jury. Your testimony will be sealed and never made public."

Kerney knew he might be making a false promise, and while he didn't want to cause Pearson any pain, getting to Norvell was much more important than preserving the woman's secret.

"It's your call," he said.

Pearson's slight nod of agreement gave Kerney no sense of satisfaction. She had the look of a small animal about to be eaten by a predator.

"Come inside the house," she said.

It took an hour for Pearson to tell her story. Part confession, part rationalization, it spanned the years just before Norvell's return to New Mexico and his election to his first term in office. Pearson had been the number-one girl in Norvell's Denver stable; the most expensive, the most in demand, the one with the most repeat customers.

She had made money, spent money, gotten high, lived the good life: designer clothes, weeks at luxury resorts with wealthy men, extravagant gifts, world travel. She explained what it had meant to a girl from a dysfunctional family who'd felt worthless and stupid.

She told him how watching Norvell's older girls get dumped as they lost their bloom made her realize she had to do something with her life before it was too late. How coming to Santa Fe on working weekends to be with clients, she found a place where she thought it would be possible to turn things around.

Kerney didn't interrupt. He heard her out as she talked about breaking away from Norvell, moving to Santa Fe, going into therapy, apprenticing with a clothing designer, opening her business, meeting her future husband, starting a family. Finally, she stopped, exhausted by the outpouring. But her eyes looked clearer, less troubled.

Kerney decided not to press too much for specifics. That would come later in an in-depth interview. He brought up Adam Tully and Luis Rojas and got confirmation that both were Norvell's partners. He learned that Rojas lived in El Paso. She had no knowledge of Cassie Bedlow, Gene Barrett, or Leo Silva.

"We'll need to meet again," he said. "You can pick the time and place, but it must be soon."

"How did you find me?" Pearson asked.

"Luck," Kerney replied.

"Here at the house is best, in the mornings after eight. My husband goes to work and drops the children off at preschool on his way."

"Tomorrow, then," Kerney said. "I think we can wrap things up in one session."

Pearson's eyes bored into Kerney with the hardness of a con who'd been trumped. "You suckered me with this bullshit about the grand jury, didn't you?"

"Not necessarily," Kerney replied. "I'll try to work something out on your behalf."

She snorted in disbelief. The sound stripped away the last shred of her sophisticated veneer. "Yeah, right. Son of a bitch. Have you got a cigarette?"

"I don't smoke."

"Neither do I."

"If you change your mind about tomorrow, our deal is off."

"No kidding," Pearson said.

Outside, the glare of sunlight bounced off the roofs of the houses in the valley below, washed out the roughness of the mountains beyond, and pulled most of the color from the sky. Kerney drove away from Helen Pearson thinking that the siren call of Santa Fe had always drawn searchers, dreamers, nonconformists, and oddballs looking to transform their lives. Why not a hooker? Considering everything, Pearson had done a damn good job of it.

His cell phone rang. At Kerney's request, the fiscal officer who kept the records of legislators' travel and per diem reimbursement payments had searched Senator Norvell's old files. Norvell had attended a three-day meeting of a joint-house finance committee in Santa Fe that coincided with the date Anna Marie Montoya had disappeared.

Kerney now had motive and opportunity, but he needed more. He decided a trip to Lincoln County would be worthwhile. That was where Montoya's body had been found and where Norvell and his buddy, Adam Tully, had grown up. The connection between the two was too strong to dismiss.

He checked the time. The architect was waiting for him at the building site with a survey crew, and Sara was standing by at Fort Leavenworth for his call. This was the day the site for the house would be spotted and staked. It was the last chance before the contractor broke ground to make sure everything was as it should be. He would talk Sara through it as the survey crew and the architect laid out the footprint for the house.

He wondered if Sara would reinvent herself once the baby came and the house was finished. Could she give up her career and be satisfied with the role of wife and mother? It was all still undecided.

He called the architect, said he was on the way, and pressed the accelerator.

There had been something not quite right about Clayton's meeting with Detective Brewer. After a few worthless hours of trying to get a handle on Harry Staggs, Clayton ate a quick meal at a family-style diner and tried to sort it out. For starters, Brewer hadn't shown any interest in Clayton's investigation, hadn't asked any questions about what a deputy sheriff from Lincoln County was doing down in El Paso seeking information about local prostitutes.

Was that because he simply didn't care, or because he already knew about it? If he knew, how did he know? Had the El Paso police captain who'd given Rojas a clean bill of health passed the word to the troops about him nosing around?

Brewer had held on to the paperwork, showing Clayton none of it, instead reading little excerpts. Was there something he didn't want Clayton to see? Clayton doubted that offense reports of solicitation for the purposes of engaging in prostitution held much in the way of sensitive or confidential information a brother officer would be reluctant to share. Or maybe they did.

Clayton had two bits of information, the names and photographs of the prostitutes. He looked at the women's pictures. Both were young and very attractive. Not what Clayton considered to be typical street-walkers, although he'd only actually met one: Sparkle, the hooker who'd fingered Ulibarri in Albuquerque.

He decided to spend some time visiting the best El Paso had to offer in the way of expensive hotels. There were only a few, if the yellow pages were anything to go by. Maybe he could find out if Brewer had been holding something back.

After three stops with no results, he made his way downtown, which had one nice hotel near the plaza. The area looked like an urban redevelopment project that had gone down the tubes when the money ran out. Around the spruced-up plaza were old commercial and retail buildings in need of attention. One, which had obviously been a flagship department store, sat empty. Two public works buildings, a public library, and an art museum were nearby. Behind the plaza several Victorian homes sat forlornly on a small hill surrounded by vacant lots. There was no life to the place, few people, and Clayton didn't see many customers inside an eatery steps away from the hotel.

Modern in design, the hotel towered over the district in startling contrast to the bleak, shabby-looking street that cut a straight line to the Rio Grande and the Mexican border.

Inside, the lobby was empty. At the reception desk, Clayton asked for the hotel security chief, and was soon greeted by a slender man in a suit and tie who introduced himself as Bob Rigby.

"Yeah, I know these two," Rigby said as he looked at the photos of Victoria and Sandy, the two hookers.

"Have you seen them lately?"

"Yeah, a couple of weeks ago they were here in the restaurant dining with two of our guests. Then they went up to their rooms."

"You're sure of that?"

Rigby nodded. "I'm sure. Those two are in the hotel three, maybe four times a month, sometimes more. I know why they're here, but I'm not a cop. Whatever guests do in their rooms doesn't matter to me, as long as they don't cause a commotion, trash the place, skip out on their bill, or steal the towels."

"What about the cops?" Clayton asked.

"They don't care either, unless they get a complaint. We try to avoid that, if possible."

"Bad for business, I suppose," Clayton said, wondering what else Detective Brewer might have lied about. He handed Rigby the rest of the photographs of the women he'd collected at the motor vehicle office.

"All of them have been here at one time or another," Rigby said. "All of them are working girls."

"Including this one?" Clayton asked, pointing to Deborah Shea's photo.

Rigby nodded. "But I haven't seen her in quite a while."

"Do you know who these women work for?"

"That, I don't know."

Pumped by what he'd learned, Clayton left Rigby and drove past Rojas's house. In daylight it was even more impressive, probably a million-dollar property, which for El Paso was about as pricey as it got.

He cruised the neighborhood, trying to think of his next move. He still needed to locate Deborah Shea, but he wanted to do it without tipping off Rojas. All the houses-there weren't very many along the paved street-looked down on El Paso over a wide stretch of open desert. At both ends of the road, signs of a private security company were posted, citing twenty-four-hour armed patrol.

That gave Clayton an idea. A security patrol vehicle had passed him when he'd been on his way to talk to Rojas. Maybe someone at the company could shed some light on who came and went at the residence. Maybe they even had a record of who lived on the property with Rojas.

After finding an address in the phone book at the closest convenience store, consulting his map, and getting lost again, he finally reached the business, which had a small suite of offices in a building across from an adult bookstore.

The owner inspected Clayton's credentials, said that he was an ex-deputy sheriff himself, talked a little cop stuff, and pulled the file on Rojas.

"We've never had any problems at the Rojas place," he said.

Aside from Rojas, two residents were listed: a personal assistant and a live-in housekeeper. Clayton wrote down the names. An attached frequent-visitor list carried the names of what looked to be Rojas's friends and business associates. Shea's name was included, along with a description and license plate number of the car she drove.

"Do your people check on unfamiliar vehicles traveling through the neighborhood?" Clayton asked.

"All the time," the man replied. "It's policy."

"Can I look through your patrol logs?"

"How far back do you want to go?" the man replied.

"A week will do it."

The man pulled the logs and let Clayton use his office, a small, tidy space next to a room where a uniformed security officer manned a radio. He sucked in his breath and whistled when he saw the entry for Harry Staggs's car and license plate number. Then he checked the date, sat back in the chair, and smiled at the ceiling.

Staggs had been with Rojas just hours before Clayton had arrived to be fed a line of bullshit by Rojas and Shea.

A small copying machine stood on a rolling cart next to a file cabinet. Clayton checked with the owner for permission, and made a copy of the log and the frequent-visitor list, mulling over his next step. It was too soon to confront Rojas. He decided to stake him out instead. Maybe Deborah Shea would show, or someone else equally interesting.

He thought about the lay of the land in front of Rojas's house. There wasn't much that provided concealment, but he could make do. On the rez he'd stalked poachers through open fields, caught trespassers in vast meadows, and busted out-of-season hunters above the timberline. He had everything he needed in his unit to stay warm and comfortable when night came and it got cold.

The prospect of the surveillance pleased Clayton far more than the thought of spending the night in an El Paso motel. He checked the wall clock. There were two hours left before dusk. If he hurried, there was enough time to locate a place to conceal his unit at the bottom of the hill below Rojas's house, hike up it, and pick a spot to hunker down.

The architect and the survey crew left just before sunset. Kerney stayed on at the building site watching touches of color fringe the few stray clouds, shadows deepen in the canyon, and the mountains fade into gray ghostly shapes. He stood behind the stakes that defined the placement of what would one day be his living room, imagining the house completed-the ceiling overhead, the plastered adobe walls, the tiled floor, the picture window looking beyond the portal to the canyon and the mountains. All of it on twelve hundred and eighty acres of ranch land just a few miles off a highway, yet far enough away to be private and secluded.

The night was quiet. Hills a mile or so to the east blocked any traffic noise, and the air was still. He thought about his parents, now long dead, who had lost their ranch. He thought about Sara, who'd left her family's ranch in Montana to attend West Point. He thought about his best friend, Dale Jennings, who'd never done anything but ranch, and vowed that he wouldn't trade one day of it to live any other way.

Kerney understood Dale's feelings. There was a pride that came from being a steward of the land, a satisfaction that came from hard physical work outside in the natural world, and a richness of spirit that came from the beauty that surrounded you.

Once, the idea that he could ever have anything close to this land had only been a dream, totally out of reach. Now it was coming true.

It wasn't a big spread and would never be economically self-sustaining. Maybe he could break even with it. If not, it was his, free and clear, with enough money left over from his inheritance after all the bills were paid to provide a comfortable life for his family and pass it on to his son, and maybe someday a daughter.

Kerney cracked a smile in the darkness. The land was beautiful but the native grasses were hardly sufficient for raising livestock. Still, he wanted to put some animals on it, and had decided to raise horses, primarily for pleasure, selling a few every now and then. Perhaps, when he retired, he'd get into breeding, but there was a lot he had to learn. Modern ranching had become a science, and he was way behind the curve on what he needed to know.

Did he have any horses? Yeah, one. A mustang named Soldier he'd bought at auction and turned into a good cutting horse. Dale was keeping Soldier on his ranch until the time came for Kerney to claim him. That time was coming fast.

Sara had been bugging him to give the ranch a name. Today on the phone, after he'd talked her through the final house siting, she'd teased him about it. Everything he'd suggested she dismissed as insipid. He had orders to come up with something good, perhaps even creative.

What did he have? Right now, he owned two sections of land and a horse.

That was it: The One Horse Ranch.

He made his way down the rocky dirt road thinking he really did need to rebuild it. He would call around to see if he could scour up a grader soon.