Fifteen

Bronkowski saw Lewis’s name on the sign-out sheet at the clerk’s desk when he asked for the Geronimo bankruptcy files. Lewis was a good cop. He had handled Fager’s cross-examination in the Gallardo trial a couple years back because he did his homework. Lewis was doing his homework on Cody Geronimo.

Bronkowski signed for files Lewis had just returned and took a seat at a table among paralegals he recognized from the big firms in town. Bankruptcy law was the world of the insane to him. He never understood how debts of hard money could vaporize like morning mist hit by the sun. He opened the stiff folders and found the creditor claims and asset lists. A two-hour review of that basic information told a story he could understand.

Fager was right. A lot of money going into Geronimo’s businesses was disappearing. Geronimo had lost second homes to creditors, and held onto his principal residence only by giving Thornton a first mortgage. Several investment properties were obvious tax shelters. He relinquished them without a fight. The files showed Geronimo struggling to retain ranch land in Valencia County. Eventually he accepted the surrender of the property to a white knight corporation with a string of letters for a name: SCR, LLC.

Bronkowski used his iPad to access data at the Public Regulation Commission. He did not recognize any of the corporation’s directors. The designated agent for service of process was a woman unfamiliar to him, though he thought he knew all the shops that provided this service in Santa Fe. But the address stood out. It was next to Fager’s law office. Thornton’s office was the only other building on that block.

Two possibilities spoke to him from the court files. Thornton was shielding Geronimo’s assets, putting herself between him and his creditors, playing straw man for a fee. Or she was cleaning him out.

He made a note to get a map of the ranch land and check tax and utility records. He returned the file to the clerk and went outside to his Harley parked at a meter under elm trees surrounding the old courthouse.

Fager had given him a long list of assignments, and he had come up with as many inquiries on his own. Two items moved to the top of his list. He sensed the Tasha Gonzalez case might hold secrets worth exploring. And he wanted to determine what Geronimo did between leaving Linda’s store and being run down by detectives Aragon and Lewis. Since the cops didn’t know either, it was an area of possible leads not tainted by Aragon’s breach of attorney-client privilege.

He called Goff and set a breakfast meeting for tomorrow. He wasn’t looking forward to that. You could never trust Goff’s work as a cop. They were supposed to trust him now?

At least Goff’s file held an address for Tasha Gonzalez’s family. Their last known address was a mobile-home park near the abandoned race track south of town. He swung by his house and switched to the Camry he used for fieldwork.

Enchanted Acres Estates sat on a barren mesa exposed to a steady wind. The ruins of the old race track were visible to the north. Cars and trucks moved in the distance along Interstate 25. This was a commuter satellite for hotel maids, gardeners, busboys, and burger flippers, deserted in the middle of the work day.

A woman in a red tank top answered the door matching the address for the Gonzalez family. A child clung to her leg as she leaned out. Bronkowski smelled boiling beans. A television blared Spanish voices. She spoke very little English. She repeated “no conosco” and “lo siento, no se.” He understood enough to gather she had never heard of the Gonzalez family. She had been at this address for a year and didn’t know who had lived in the tin can before her. She closed the door and left him on the stoop.

He tried four more single-wides before anyone answered. The thin Hispanic man who opened the door at the fifth reeked of beer and cigarettes and clothes that needed washing. On the hand holding the doorknob, age spots covered faded tattoos. Stained pant legs were worn thin over his bony thighs. The frayed cap on his head said, “The Chosin Few.”

“Were you there? Chosin Reservoir,” Bronkowski said.

“First Marines. You remember? No, you’re not old enough.”

“I know what you guys did. I was Army, the Balkans.” He left it at that. He had his war stories. But nothing like what this man faced on that frozen Korean lake. “I’m looking for the family of Tasha Gonzalez.”

“Come in. I hear better out of the wind.”

The living room was a battered sofa with a television on a milk crate, aluminum foil wrapped around a rabbit-ear antenna. Bronkowski was glad to see it was off so they could talk. But he wondered what the old man had been doing before the knock at the door. No newspaper, magazines, or books he could see. No sign of other activity. Maybe he had been napping. Maybe he had been thinking about Korea.

His name was Narciso Roybal. “Take a seat,” he said.

Cigarette ashes spilled out of saucers on the floor. Empty fast-food bags covered a card table. Bronkowski saw nowhere to sit except next to the old man on sofa cushions leaking chunks of foam. He decided to ask his questions standing.

Yes, he had known the Gonzalez family, Roybal said. He remembered Tasha; she had been pretty but was getting fat. Then she disappeared. One night, two white vehicles, “those fancy Cadillac Suburbans,” came for the family. Their place went up for sale the next day. That was ten years ago.

The old man’s left hand lay lifeless in his lap, though the middle finger twitched as he spoke. He lit a cigarette and said, “Escalades, that’s what they were. Not Suburbans. I had a Chevy once. I don’t drive no more. Can’t hardly see you except you’re so big.”

“What’s wrong with your hand?”

“The damn thing don’t work, that’s what’s wrong. But God gave me two. So I can’t complain.”

“Is anyone caring for you?”

“That boy down the street brings me something now and then. I think he’s keeping most of my money for himself. Says gas is really expensive. Drives all the way into town for take-out. I told him bring me Dinty Moore or Campbell’s. Not Taco Bell again, please. But I don’t know.”

Bronkowski nodded at a black dial telephone on the counter. “That work?”

“Better than my hand. My daughter calls from California. She’s a teacher. Three kids. Smart enough to dump her no-good husband. Smart enough to get out of this place.”

Bronkowski wrote the number for the VA outreach team on one of the fast food bags.

“They’ll come to your home to help, if you want. The guy in charge was a jarhead like you. The next war after yours.”

The old man took the piece of paper bag in his only good hand while the cigarette burned between his lips. It was hard to believe this frail, withered human being had been with the Marines when the Chinese poured out of the hills. He had seen some things.

“Thank you,” Bronkowski said and let himself out.

He made one more stop before checking in with Fager. He swung by the assessor’s office to see tax records for the mobile home where the Gonzalez family had lived. The annual bill was being sent to Thornton’s law office. He needed to call Fager, share the ideas coming into his head.

“Maybe Marcy’s cleaning out Geronimo by blackmailing him, stashing the Gonzalez family somewhere, reminding Geronimo every time she wants something, like an Aston-Martin or a big house above Santa Fe.”

“Get in here,” Fager said over the phone to Bronkowski, still at the Assessor’s Office, but outside now where he could talk.

“You want me to bring food to the house? Burritos from Tomasita’s? When’s the last time you ate anything?”

“I’m at the office,” Fager said and hung up.

Bronkowski drove across town and parked in the lot, next to Fager’s Mercedes. He climbed the steps and entered the waiting area. Empty chairs, no prospective clients hoping to see a lawyer. He stopped to give Roberta Weldon a hug and heard about Fager telling her to make
arrangements for Linda’s funeral, like ordering up exhibits for trial or telling her to get out subpoenas. What will he be like without Linda? He didn’t have an answer for her.

He stuck his head into Kate Morrow’s office. She was on the telephone begging a prosecutor for more time to provide the defense’s discovery. She blinked, her eyes tiny beads behind thick glasses, and waved. Bronkowski continued down the hall to Fager’s office. He heard typing before he got there.

Fager was dressed in the same suit he had worn to the opening at Geronimo’s gallery. Roberta had not been able to keep up with the empty coffee cups topping the room’s furniture. Pages overflowed his printer tray.

“Robbie told me about the funeral. Anything I can do?” Bronkowski took the chair in front of Fager’s desk.

“Barela’s is handling everything,” Fager said without turning around. He pounded out a paragraph then added, “I want it simple.”

“Berardinelli.”

“What?”

“Jesus. Don’t you remember who’s doing your wife’s funeral? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Fager stopped attacking his keyboard and spun in his chair.

“So I mixed up the name of the funeral director.” He had not shaved. Coffee dribbles stained his shirt. “When Cody Geronimo is wearing an orange jumpsuit I’ll slow down to mourn. Now, what’s this about Marcy blackmailing him?”

He wanted to lift Fager again, really crush him to make him cry, shed just one tear.

“Bronk?”

He told Fager about the ranch, Geronimo’s house, the Gonzalez family being driven out of town in style, and Thornton picking up the taxes on their place. “Marcy got rich too fast for the kinds of cases we’ve seen her handling in court. All of Geronimo’s assets coming her way, it’s got me thinking she’s doing more than lawyering.”

Fager sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. “She’s had some big settlements, women raped by prison guards.”

“Think of what your clients tell you. Not only what they did, but where the gun’s buried, where the money’s hidden, where they slipped up, and you’d better know before you learn it at trial. I’ve seen them come in with documents that would send them to prison if they couldn’t trust you to keep them locked in your safe. Somebody else, Marcy, might see an opportunity instead of an obligation.”

“There’s easier ways than blackmail to steal from a client,” Fager said. “But I agree to some extent. Marcy’s been milking this guy since she stole him away from this office.”

“Explain that.”

“Roberta found the phone message from Geronimo when he was shopping for a lawyer. Probably the Tasha Gonzalez matter. Marcy sized him up and went solo with a career client in her purse. If she had processed the intake straight and called me in, I probably would have been representing him.”

“And Linda would be alive. He wouldn’t have killed his own lawyer’s wife.”

Fager stood up to stretch, move his neck, roll his shoulders.

“Concentrate on the Gonzalez family,” he said. “Let’s find out where they went and how they’ve been living. Marcy got them out of Dodge for a reason. She might be paying them to stay away.”

“Should I keep running down Geronimo’s assets? You could sue him, take everything he has. The Gonzalez’s might get homesick when the money stops coming. Other families might come forward. The way he handled Linda, he’s got experience.”

Fager shook his head.

“Going civil, collecting would take a decade. He’d run to bankruptcy again when we’d cornered him. But see if you can find any pattern connecting Geronimo’s financial transactions, like unloading real estate or mortgaging property, with women disappearing from Santa Fe or turning up dead. Those would be times he might have needed lots of cash if he was buying silence.”

“SFPD won’t give me their missing and unsolved lists.”

“Goff can get it through Aragon.”

Fager turned backed to his computer. Bronkowski wondered what he was writing so intently. Fager cursed and deleted his screen. Bronkowski left him alone and went to start a skip trace on the Gonzalez family.

As he was unlocking the door to his Camry, Thornton and Montclaire passed on their way to Thornton’s Aston.

“Of all the people you could work for,” he said. “And on Linda’s case. Why?”

Thornton pushed sunglasses off her face.

“I don’t remember Walter turning down any case, as long as it paid. I’m in the same business, Bronco.”

“Reasonable doubt for a reasonable fee.”

“Not this lawyer. My fees are never reasonable.”

Thornton and Montclaire slid onto the Aston’s leather seats while Bronkowski squeezed into his Toyota. They watched him struggle to pull the shoulder strap across his chest, unable to turn in the space between the seat and steering wheel.

“There’s your competition, Lily. He may look like a lunkhead, but he gets the job done.”

“He has terrible posture.”

“He’ll do anything for Walter, and he really liked Linda. You could see it when he was around her. Other people in the room, she’d be the one he always talked to. Dinner at her house, he’d be helping with dishes, getting up from the table to bring out food, pour wine, until she had to tell him to sit down. We need to know what he’s doing. It will tell us what Walter’s doing.”

“They had something going, Bronkowski and Linda?”

“For her it was like petting a guy’s dog to show you liked him. Her guy was Walter.”

Montclaire snapped her fingers and said, “Andrew. That’s his name.”

“Who?” Thornton pressed the ignition and the Aston responded with a low rumble. She backed out fast, just as Bronkowski was pulling from his space. He had to brake to avoid hitting her.

“That hot guy you shooed away when Cody called. Just when it was getting fun. That kid would have gone all night.”

“So glad your mind’s on work,” Thornton said. “I bet Bronkowski thinks about nothing but work.”

“He looks like that, there is nothing else.”