Warm and Nicely Buried

Warren Fragua was always eating piñon nuts and this night was no different. You could always find him because of his trail of shells. Lem Becker liked Fragua because he knew more about fly-fishing than anyone he had ever met. Lem wished it were spring and that the two of them were down at the confluence of the Rio Grande and the Red River.

“You know these people well, Warren?” Lem asked, pulling out onto the main highway. The road surface was slick, the traffic melting the snow and the wind freezing the water.

“I arrested José when he was sixteen for stealing a car. I’ve checked on him from time to time since then. Not really a good kid, but I didn’t think he was too bad. He and his old man fought like crazy, but that’s not strange.”

“Been in any trouble since the car theft?”

“Not caught for anything. I can’t imagine him in anything big-time though. What the hell’s big around here anyway?” Fragua cracked a piñon with his teeth. “Sheriff doesn’t think it was an accident. If that’s true, then something big got those guys killed.”

Lem turned the defroster on high and leaned forward, wiped the inside of the windshield with his glove.

“That just makes it worse,” Fragua said.

“That’s what I hear.”

“You been tying any?”

“Bunch of nymphs,” Lem said. “Some zug-bugs, Tellicos, some early brown stoneflies. And some grasshoppers and little black beetles. You?”

“I’ve been tying a bunch of parachute Royal Coachmen. They’re fun to tie. Fall to the water real nice, too.”

They were silent for a while and Lem’s mind returned to the sour business at hand. “Don’t you hate telling people stuff like this?”

Fragua looked through the windshield as if studying something. “I’d like to say it’s just part of the job. But it’s always terrible.”

“What were they doing out there?” Lem asked Fragua and himself.

“We’ll know more when the State Police report comes in. Who knows, maybe the Marotta kid got picked up hitchhiking, and they stayed out there to smoke some dope.” Fragua offered Lem some nuts.

“Yeah, right.”

“Maybe they were transported there by aliens.”

“That’s more likely.”

“Turn here,” Fragua said. “They live down across the creek.”

Lem followed Fragua’s directions and they found the house after driving past it twice because of the snow. They walked up onto the porch and stomped the snow off their boots while they waited for someone to answer. A young woman opened the chained door, saw the uniformed men, and closed it. The door was opened again by an older woman.

“Mr. Fragua,” the woman said, half smiling, seeming to see something in the officer’s face and falling back a tiny step. “We haven’t seen you for a long time.” She moved back to let them into the house.

“I know,” Fragua said. “I’ve been really busy, as I’m sure you’ve been.”

“Yes, yes, very busy.” She closed the door. “Especially with the church.”

“This is Officer Becker.”

Mrs. Marotta smiled at Lem, then turned her attention again to Fragua. “What is wrong?”

“Where is Mr. Marotta?”

“He’s at my mother’s house. I just talked to him a couple of minutes ago.”

“It’s José,” Fragua said.

Mrs. Marotta sat on the sofa. Lem looked up to see the young woman in the doorway of the kitchen. Fragua sat down beside the boy’s mother.

“I called the police this morning because he didn’t come home for two nights. He’s never been gone for two nights,” Mrs. Marotta said. “You have him in jail?” She shook her head. “What has he done now?”

Fragua rubbed his temple, then took the woman’s hand. The young woman in the kitchen doorway gasped audibly and disappeared. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Marotta, but there’s been an accident.”

“Dios mio,” the woman said and tears were already finding her cheeks.

“José is dead.”

The woman crumpled into Fragua’s arms, sobbing. Sobbing came from the kitchen. Here, someone had had time to consider how they were going to break the worst of news and the result was no different than when he had done it clumsily.

A man came in through the back door and entered the living room through the kitchen. He was very confused, on the verge of being angry, beginning to pace. “Que le ocurre?” the man asked his wife.

The old woman just sobbed more.

Fragua stood and took the man’s hand. “José is dead, Mr. Marotta.”

The man’s face went blank. He went to an overstuffed chair and sat, looking straight ahead.

Lem knew that they weren’t going to get anywhere asking questions tonight. They’d have to come back tomorrow.

“What happened?” Mr. Marotta asked.

“As far as we can tell,” Fragua said, “José was with three other men in a van and they were trying to keep warm with a stove and they smothered themselves.”

The old woman howled.

Mr. Marotta went to his wife and held her. The young woman ran in from the kitchen and sat on the sofa, too, pressing up against her father.

Fragua looked at Lem who nodded. “We’ll talk again in the morning. Officer Becker and I have some questions we need to ask.”

The deputies left.

Lem and Fragua didn’t speak on their way back to the station. Lem just let the other man out.

Lem walked into his house and looked at his walls, funky furniture, and unwashed dishes in the sink and breathed easier. He peeled off his hat and coat, went to the gas heater and turned it to high. His shoes off, he slipped into the moose-hide moccasins his mother had given him last Christmas. He looked at the collection of feathers and patches of hair and spools of thread on his desk.

He went to the kitchen, poured himself a tall glass of orange juice, then returned to sit behind the vise clamped to his desktop. He secured a size 10 hook and imagined a trout on the Henry’s Fork River in Idaho rising for the Green Drake he was about to tie. He recalled watching his father spending the cold winter nights reading and tying flies for the next season. Lem finally asked his father to teach him to tie, not because he wanted to catch fish so much, but because he thought the flies were beautiful. He was ten at the time and he could still remember watching his first colorful streamer develop in the vise in front of him, and the way it felt to trim the deer hair on his first grasshopper, the pieces of feathers floating, how much fun it was to dub the muskrat fur onto the thread with his thumb and index finger. He laughed at himself. He hadn’t even put the first winds of thread on the hook and he was already feeling better.

As he dubbed a mixture of yellow rabbit and tan-red fox fur onto the olive thread he recalled his father. He no longer felt sad when he thought of him. In fact, thinking of him made Lem relax. They had been close, for some reason they never had the conflicts his friends did with their fathers. He wondered if his present profession would have caused a problem between them. He wondered himself why he did it. Somehow he felt out of touch with his time; that was how he put it. He didn’t feel like people his age. He wanted to be a part of another generation. He shook his head now as he played it over in his brain. He wasn’t like a lot of people who became policemen, didn’t want to be like them, but then most of the lawmen in those parts weren’t like that, not tough, not hard, but doing a job that made them feel pretty good. He worked the grizzly hackle around the body and turned his mind again to trout.

The morning that came was as quiet as sleep, the layer of snow smothering the sounds of daybreak. He sat now at the edge of his mattress, his brain still tethered to the remnants of a dream. He was chasing another man on a dirt bike. It was a kind of game, he thought, since they were both laughing. They were riding over rough terrain, bouncing high and sliding, but there were buildings there. Finally, Lem stopped and the other man came back to him and together they observed Lem’s badly warped front wheel. It seemed a common thing, no surprise to either of them, and so Lem lifted the bike and carried it. The logic of the dream began to disintegrate as his eyes opened more fully.

He rubbed the back of his neck and looked out the window at the foot of snow. The sky was clear of any promise of more bad weather, a brilliant cobalt blue that lifted his spirits and also told him that the hour was late. He found his watch on the stand by his bed. It was nearly eight.

Still, he took his time showering, enjoying the steaming spray. There were a lot of things wrong with his small house, but the shower was not one of them. The water was good and hot and the pressure was strong, like in some gym locker rooms, the droplets of water seeming to pierce the skin like tiny darts. He dried off, got dressed, and went into the kitchen where he fried himself some bacon and a couple of eggs. He appreciated these early hours alone, wanted them to last, but they wouldn’t, they couldn’t. When he was finished eating, he readied himself for the cold and went out to free his car from the snow.

As he cleared the ice from the windshield he thought of his business that morning. He had to go question the Marottas and go through the kid’s room. That wouldn’t be pleasant, but at least Warren Fragua would be with him.

The incompetent highway crews had done a good job of transforming the hazardous roads into deadly sheets of ice. They had also done a beautiful job of dumping endless strands of salt and sand down along the center line where no one’s tires would ever touch it. He parked in front of the station and entered just behind Fragua.

Once inside he was shoulder to shoulder with Fragua, staring at the chubby finger Sheriff Bucky Paz was pointing at them. “I want the two of you to go to Fonda’s Funeral Home right now.”

“What’s the problem?”

“Somebody broke in there last night and walked away with José Marotta.”

“Stole his body?” Fragua said.

“Apparently. All I know is Fonda got there this morning and the boy was gone. By the way, that truck last night was stolen from Taos, reported five days ago. Now, go.”

Lem drove. The acquisition of so many dead bodies was unusual for the Plata Sheriff’s Department and the only place to put them was the same place a single body would have been put, Fonda’s Funeral Home. From there the bodies were to go to the forensic pathologist in Santa Fe for autopsies.

“I’ll bet Fonda just misplaced him,” Fragua said.

“Why would anyone take a dead body?” Lem wondered aloud. “Maybe the kid swallowed a bunch of dope in balloons and the bad guys want it back.”

“You’ve been watching television again. I told you, just tie every night and your mind won’t get polluted.”

“You watch television all the time,” Lem said.

“So, I ought to know, right?”

Lem slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting a pickup that skidded through a stop sign.

Fragua braced himself with a hand against the dash. “Don’t think about it. Let it happen. That’s what my daughter says. ‘Let it happen.’ And I tell her she better not let it happen. You know what I mean.”

Lem smiled.

“It’s like tying flies,” the Indian said.

“Everything for you is like tying flies.”

“True. But listen. You’ve got to tie things down in the right order or it won’t work. You can’t go tying down the tinsel after the body or tie the tail on last and expect it to look right. Everything works in the same way, one step at a time, but the right step.”

“I never knew you were such a philosopher.”

Fonda was a square man, not very tall, but wide-shouldered with large features, huge eyes and nose, and big hands and, like so many morticians, Lem thought, drained of all blood and body heat. He was mad, but like the funeral director he was, he wasn’t unsettled. “What can I tell you?” he said. “I came in this morning and the boy was gone.”

“Is there any sign of forced entry?” Lem asked, following Fonda into the back room with three tables with bodies and one without.

“Forced entry?” the man said, almost a giggle in his voice. “It’s a robbery, not a rape.” He laughed.

Lem sighed and caught his eyes. “That’s not funny,” Lem said.

“Excuse me,” Fonda said sarcastically.

“Forced entry?”

“I don’t know,” Fonda said. “This place has a hundred windows. This is a funeral home. I never expected break-ins. All I know is that he didn’t get up and walk away.

“So, get your clues and get out. It’s bad for business to have you seen here.”

“How do you figure that?” Fragua asked.

“Cops are bad for any business,” Fonda said. “Unless you own a doughnut shop.” He laughed again.

Lem watched as Fragua walked past the bodies to the empty table. “Mr. Fonda, you’re the only undertaker in this town. I doubt our presence will affect your good work.”

“Just do what you have to do and get out.” He started out of the room.

“Was anybody working here last night?” Fragua asked.

Exasperated, Fonda answered, “No.”

“Emilio still work for you?” Lem asked. “What’s his last name?”

“Vilas. And yes, he still works for me.”

“When will he be in?” Lem didn’t like being in the room with the dead and he was beginning to get jumpy. He tried to breathe slowly and deeply.

“He’s not coming in today. I usually call him when I need him. Now, if that’s all?” He turned and walked through the doorway and out of sight.

“Man, he’s a real charmer, isn’t he?” Lem said.

Fragua ran his finger along the edge of the table. “Well, do we look at the ‘hundred’ windows?”

“If it’s that easy to get in, why bother? They probably came in through the front door.” Lem looked around the room, at the covered forms and, aside from the obvious, something wasn’t right.

“You know they say Fonda’s funny,” Fragua said in a hushed voice.

“You mean funny—ha-ha or funny—peculiar?”

“You never heard anybody say, ‘Fonda’s fonda boys?’”

“I never heard that,” Lem said, checking the doorway, “but I heard ‘Fonda dead bodies.’” Lem felt badly for talking about the man. “You know, if you’re the only undertaker in town, people are bound to talk and make up stuff.” Lem turned his attention back to the empty table. “José didn’t get up and walk out. Think we should get the kit and dust for prints?”

“I don’t think we’re going to find anything.”

“Yeah, I agree.” Lem blew out a breath, almost a whistle. “We’ve got to tell the boy’s parents.”

“Shit.”

“This sucks,” Lem said, rubbing his forehead.

“You thought she freaked out last night,” Fragua said. “You wait until that good Catholic woman finds out her boy’s not going to get a Christian burial. You wait until she finds out that some devils have stolen him.”

They didn’t tell Fonda they were leaving.

To keep his mind from the unpleasant business of talking with the Marottas and later having to fill out the case reports that he had let pile up the last few days, Lem imagined the life of Armand Fonda. He knew where the man lived, in a very nice and sprawling adobe north of town, a Cyclone fence looking out of place surrounding it. He remembered another musing of his father, that it seemed Cyclone fences did little to keep out cyclones. He laughed in his head, thinking that Fonda’s fence worked. No cyclone had touched his house since he put up the barrier. Fonda got up, he thought, had a nice grapefruit half with one of those special spoons that Lem’s mother owned but never used; it sat in her drawer full of odd and useless gadgets, like the plastic box that shaped boiled eggs into cubes. Fonda talked to his little dog, a Pekingese or something, cooed to it like it was his little boy. Then he imagined that the man had all sorts of funereal trade journals around, about caskets and embalming, Mortician’s Monthly and maybe Fluid Facts. Death was a strange thing to choose to be around.

Lem shook his head clear and viewed the neighborhood of the Marottas in the daylight. Small poorly maintained adobes stood in a row, awkward wood-framed additions poking out of most, testimony to their disregard for family planning. Sheep and chickens wandered yards and an occasional horse stood under a rough shed. The other side of the road was open, an arroyo splitting it about thirty yards in. There was a wreath on the front door of the Marotta house. The snow made it all so peaceful, so soft, gentle, and so, sadder.

Fragua knocked. Mrs. Marotta came to the door, her eyes red from crying and lack of sleep, but less confused after a night of praying. She was expecting the visit from the police so she was not thrown by it. She let them into the living room and asked them to sit, offered them coffee, which they declined.

Fragua sat, but Lem wandered off to stand by the window and look out at the field across the road and the hills rising beyond it.

“Please,” Fragua said, gesturing that the woman sit by him on the sofa.

Mrs. Marotta looked even smaller today, Lem thought, viewing her from behind, her narrow shoulders slumping toward her heart.

“Mrs. Marotta, José is gone.”

The woman took Fragua’s hand and patted it as if consoling him. “Yes, my son is dead.” She assured him that her feet were planted firmly on real ground.

“Mrs. Marotta, I don’t know how to tell you this. I’m really sorry.” These words were coming harder than the ones last night delivering news of the boy’s death. “Someone broke into Fonda’s Funeral Home last night and they took José’s body.”

The woman’s head turned so that she could take the deputy in fully. Then she shook her head. She looked as if she just couldn’t make the words have meaning.

“José is gone. His body was stolen and we don’t know where it is.”

The woman crumpled, fainted, fell over away from Fragua onto the sofa as if she’d been shot.

“Christ!” Lem said.

The daughter came running from another room and let out a short scream. Fragua lifted the woman’s head in his hands, stroked dark hair from her face. Lem went to the phone to dial the paramedics. “Mama, mama,” the girl pleaded with her mother to regain consciousness. Fragua told the girl to go get a glass of water.

Lem put down the phone. “They’re on their way. Is she all right?”

“I think so. She’s breathing okay.”

The girl came back with the water and a damp rag. Fragua took the rag and let her hold the glass while he wiped the woman’s face. Lem watched the girl tremble as she watched the still and silenced face of her mother. This was why he worked this job, to see this, to learn something about life, but he had learned nothing, was learning nothing. Life was empty here in this house where this woman kept things so clean, so tidy, and her god was not here for her, he believed this. Then on the wall he saw it. He hadn’t noticed it last night, but there it was, a crucifix affixed to the plaster and a bare-chested Jesus Christ wrapped in a skirt. These people were Penitentes. The Penitentes were a secret order of Catholics who practiced rather severe bodily penance and recondite burials of their dead. Not having a body to put into the earth was going to be a very big deal for the Marottas. Lem felt close to crying as he watched the old woman begin to come around. He heard the paramedics’ truck squeal to a halt outside. He went to the door and let them in with a blast of cold air that he was certain would aid in the woman’s revival. Fragua stood away and let the medics work.

Lem went to the girl. “Are you okay?”

She nodded.

He pulled strands of her long dark hair from her face. “My name is Lem. What’s yours?”

“Rosa.”

“Rosa, everything’s going to be all right.” He put his arm around her and gave her a hug. “Will you show me which room is your brother’s?”

She nodded and walked down the hall. Lem and Fragua followed. She stood away from the door. Fragua entered while Lem bent to address the girl. “Your mother’s probably going to need you out there.”

“I’ll start looking over here,” Fragua said as Lem entered. He was sitting on the unmade bed, opening the drawer of the nightstand.

Lem went to the dresser by the window. “These people are Penitentes,” he reported.

Fragua looked at him. “That’s real tough.”

They went back to their searching. Lem had worked his way to the bottom drawer of the beat-up dresser, peeling past the boy’s sweaters and T-shirts, when Fragua said, “Oh my god.” He turned to see the Indian holding a blue notebook in his lap. “Look at this.”

Lem looked on from beside him. The pages were filled with drawings of pentagram-marked monsters and horned devils and bloody, ripped-up bodies, all done in black ink, each figure underscored by a rough rust-colored streak. “Do you suppose that’s blood?” Lem asked.

Fragua swallowed hard. “I think it is. It’s the same all the way through.”

“You know teenagers draw shit like that all the time. I mean, that’s nothing unusual,” Lem said.

“I suppose.”

“Where did you find that?” Lem asked.

“Top shelf, closet.”

Lem went to the closet and pulled a shoe box down from the same shelf, uncovered it. “Howdy, boys.” He tilted the container toward Fragua so he could have a look at the stack of bills. Lem counted them out. “Two hundred sixty-three dollars and this little stash here.” He held up the small vial of white powder to the light through the window. He unscrewed the cap, dipped his finger, took a taste. “Yep.” He sighed. “And this. What do you think it is?”

Fragua looked at the plastic bag that Lem dangled in his face. “Looks like some little animal’s heart.”

“That’s what it looks like to me, too. What was this kid? A devil worshipper or something?” He sat on the bed next to his partner. “Listen, I’m just a dumb cowboy. This is too much for me.”

“And I just want to be on a stream somewhere.”

“Are you scared?”

“You bet.”

Lem heard crying on the other side of the door. He opened the door and startled Rosa Marotta. He stepped into the hallway with her and closed the door so she wouldn’t see any of the things they had found. In the living room he could see the paramedics still tending to the mother.

“It’s okay, Rosa,” he said, touching her hair. “We really want to help. Will you help, too?”

The girl looked at him.

“Was your brother acting strange?”

She nodded.

“How so?”

She sucked in her sobbing. “He would sing in his room, strange things I didn’t understand.” She looked to see that her mother was still on the sofa. “The way he looked at me sometimes scared me.”

“Did he have any friends?”

“A guy named Emilio. They spent a lot of time together.”

“You know his last name?”

Rosa shook her head, then straightened at the sound of the paramedics leaving.

“Is his name Vilas?” Lem asked quickly.

Rosa shrugged, looking toward the living room.

“Thank you, Rosa.”

Fragua came out of the bedroom in time to see Rosa walking toward her mother. He was carrying the notebook and the shoe box and he put them into Lem’s hands. “I’ll talk to Mrs. Marotta and you get these outside.”

Lem nodded and walked behind him to the living room.

Mrs. Marotta was standing, hugging her daughter. Fragua went to her and put his hand on her back. “Are you all right now, Mrs. Marotta?” he asked.

She nodded. She was still crying a little.

Fragua continued to console her with phrases that to Lem grew more and more empty for their repetition. Lem said nothing to her and walked out to stand beneath a sky that had again turned gray. He stood by the car and waited for the other officer. He looked at the field across the road. To live with such beauty, he thought. You really didn’t need money if you could see land like this, just open your door and have it be there. About fifty yards away he spotted a coyote lurking in the brush.

“Are you ready to go?” Fragua asked from behind him, waking him.

They got into the car. “Rosa told me that José spent a lot of time with somebody named Emilio.”

Lem finished turning the car around in the narrow road. “That would be convenient, wouldn’t it? Seems likely, too. I tell you what, you go talk to Mr. Marotta and I’ll go track down Emilio.”

Lem drove to the little duplex on Carson Road that was supposed to be the home of Emilio Vilas, but no one answered his knock. He knocked on the door of the other unit and a robed, middle-aged woman with bright red hair responded, rubbing her eyes, annoyed.

“I’m looking for Emilio Vilas,” Lem said.

“Well, he doesn’t live here,” she said.

“Sorry to disturb you, ma’am. Do you know Emilio?”

“He lives next door, but I don’t know him. I’ve got enough trouble.”

“Trouble?”

She looked at the deputy as if he were stupid. “Men are trouble.”

“So, you wouldn’t have any idea where he is.”

“No, I wouldn’t. Try a bar. He’s a damn alcoholic.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

She didn’t say anything, just slammed her door.

Lem decided to take the woman’s advice and check the nearby bars. He drove by one, kicking himself because he hadn’t thought to ask what Emilio’s car looked like. He entered three taverns and asked if anyone had seen the kid. He received little cooperation. Luckily, he had a vague memory of Emilio’s face and in the third dive he saw him. Emilio panicked and made a dash for the back door. Lem gave chase, leaping over a chair, squeezing through stacked crates in front of the rear exit to get outside only to see Emilio’s heels and elbows speeding down the alley. The kid hit a patch of ice and slid into several garbage cans, screamed, and grabbed his leg. He looked back at the deputy trotting toward him, but didn’t get up.

Lem stood over the young man. “How you doing?” He thought it was a funny thing to say.

Emilio just looked at him.

“Broken?”

“No, I just twisted it. What you want with me, man?”

Lem sat, straddling an upset garbage can. “You hear about José?”

“Yeah, he’s dead. What’s that got to do with me?”

“You were pals, right?”

“Yeah, I guess.” He continued to rub his leg.

A mouse or a small rat bolted from the garbage and across Lem’s feet and he let loose with a short scream. So much for the macho front. He looked up and down the cold, empty alley. “What do you know about José’s body?”

“I don’t know nothing about his body. What do you mean, ‘what do I know about his body?’”

“His body’s gone, stolen right out of the funeral home.”

“Yeah, so?”

“You work there, don’t you?”

“Sure, but, man, I didn’t have nothing to do with José’s body.”

“So, you knew about it?”

“Of course I knew about it. I work there.” He stopped rubbing his leg and looked toward where the alley opened onto Norte Drive.

“Who are you looking for?”

“Nobody.”

“Do you have any idea how they got into Fonda’s?”

Emilio shook his head.

“Can you walk?”

Emilio pulled himself up and tested his leg, nodded.

“Come on, let me buy you a cup of coffee,” Lem said.

“I need to be going.” He tossed another quick glance toward Norte.

“No, I really want to buy you a cup of coffee.” Lem looked at his eyes. “It’s the least I can do.” He stood and righted the can, put the lid on it. “Come on.” He supported the man.

Emilio snatched his arm free of the deputy’s help. Lem walked him back into the tavern where they sat in a dimly lit booth. He called for the bartender to bring them a couple cups of coffee.

“So, what kind of stuff was José into?” Lem asked.

“How would I know?”

The bartender brought the coffee and gave Emilio a hard stare.

“What’s his problem?” Emilio asked, watching the man return to the bar.

“Cops are bad for business.” Lem blew at his coffee. “Tell me about José. Tell me about his cocaine deal.”

“What deal? José tooted a little now and then. Big fucking deal.”

“Listen, kid, you can cut the tough stuff. I don’t want to fight with you. I just want to find José so his mama can put him in the ground and feel okay. Hear what I’m saying?”

“José didn’t have no deal.”

“All right. What about the devil shit he was into?”

Emilio shook his head nervously. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The guy kept a rat’s heart in a Baggie. He was into something funny. Listen, you were his friend, so tell me what you know.”

“We were friends. We scored some dope together, got high, got drunk, but I don’t know what he was into, man. Honest. He was acting real strange the last few months. I really didn’t see him that much.”

Lem nodded, starting to believe him. “What do you think of your boss?”

“Mr. Fonda? He’s weird as shit, but he’s okay. You don’t have to worry about him. Listen, José’s mother is going to be all right. Don’t sweat it. She’s not … you know what I mean?”

Everything suddenly fell into place. The Marottas were not about to let some state pathologist desecrate the body of their son. “I know what you mean,” Lem said. “Fonda’s weird?”

“The way he acts. I don’t know. He’s cold like he’s dead or something.” Emilio hadn’t touched his coffee. Now, he sat looking down at the cup.

“You don’t drink coffee?”

“Don’t need it.”

“What was José doing up on Plata Ridge?”

“I don’t know.”

“If he wasn’t hanging out with you, then who was he hanging out with? Do you know who they were?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know nothing. I didn’t see him a lot lately, okay?”

“Okay.” Lem looked at Emilio over the rim of his cup as he finished his coffee. “If you think of anything, give me a call.”

Emilio nodded.

Fragua was eating piñon nuts like crazy, cracking and chewing, and brushing the spent shells off his lap onto the floor of Lem’s truck. Lem looked at him and then at the mess.

“You’re going to clean that up, aren’t you?” Lem asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Clean what up?”

“The shells.”

“This is natural waste, bio-stuff. No need to clean these up. They’ll break down naturally and contribute to the ecosystem, which is your car.” Fragua laughed and sucked at some food that had become caught between his teeth. He looked out the window and yawned. “I love the early morning.”

“Does Mary like to get up early, too?”

“Can’t stand it. She’s a night person. Stays up all hours puttering around the house and watching television. She gets up just after me, though. I don’t know how she does it. She must get four hours of sleep, five tops.”

“I need eight,” Lem said.

“Me, too.” Fragua studied Lem for a moment. “You want to talk about yesterday?”

“Not really. I do have something to tell you. I talked to Emilio last night.”

“Yeah?”

“I found out something about José Marotta’s body.”

“Don’t tell me,” Fragua said. “If you know, that’s fine and let’s keep it that way.”

“You knew,” Lem said.

Fragua looked out the passenger-side window.

“How’d you know?”

“I’m not sure. I guess the Marottas didn’t convince me. Mr. Marotta was too upset and Mrs. Marotta wasn’t upset enough. She didn’t really faint. Hell, I don’t know, but I knew they had him.”

“Enough said on the matter.”

Lem pulled off the highway and onto the dirt road that led to Garapata Mesa. His truck bounced wildly along the wagon-rutted lane even though he was driving slowly.