Twenty-Four

Bronkowski worked on filling the gap in time between the register receipt for Geronimo’s book purchase at Fager’s Finds and the moment he fled detectives Aragon and Lewis. In files Goff supplied, he found Aragon’s observation that Geronimo had the sour smell of beer on his breath. He knew all of Santa Fe’s bars and thought the classy Staab House, a Victorian mansion turned into a bar and restaurant, would be Geronimo’s first pick in the neighborhood of Fager’s Finds. But his inquiries there of the evening manager and her service staff found no one who remembered seeing the artist on the night of the murder.

He walked to the next upscale watering hole on his list and struck out again. He was wondering if he would have to expand his search to restaurants when he heard country music drifting down the alley that led to the Howling Coyote Saloon. He decided to give it a shot. Peanut shells crunched under his heels as he made his way to the bar and asked for the manager. The bartender pointed him to a hallway leading to a small office, where he found a man in a patterned golf shirt, hair full of gel, punching numbers into an adding machine.

“Excuse me,” Bronkowski said, his bulk blocking the entryway. “I’m a friend of the family of a woman murdered a few days ago.” He showed a photo of Cody Geronimo. “I’m wondering if you remember this guy being here.”

“You’re not with that bitch?”

“Which bitch would that be?”

“The one looks like a woman in pantyhose commercials when I was a kid. That one has a mouth on her.”

“She was asking about this same man?”

The manager was about to say something then turned his attention back to his adding machine.

“I got work to do. Ask for Laura. She couldn’t stop talking about serving the guy. She’s the short brunette with a gallon of ink on her neck.”

He saw her distributing bottles of beer around a table of middle-aged men and women wearing shirts about rafting the Rio Grande Gorge. He caught up to her as she counted loose change from her apron. When he showed her Geronimo’s photo he caught the recognition in her eyes, followed by a forced flat expression.

“He had a beer. Ordered another, but left before I got the order in.” She swept coins into her palm, jiggled them a little, shoved them in her apron.

She was in her early twenties, dressed in a tank top. The hair on one side of her head had been cut short to reveal tattoos of vines curling around her ear. She avoided his eyes.

“Tony,” she shouted past him to the bartender. “Tap another Fat Tire. Those last were flat tires.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Look.” She smoothed her apron. “I’m busy here. He had a beer. Ordered another but left. That’s all.”

“Where was he sitting?”

“He was at the bar.”

“Why were you serving him? You wait tables.”

“Two Negronis and a G and T,” she yelled louder than necessary. “Pronto!”

“Linda Fager was a wonderful woman.”

The waitress finally faced him. “Who?”

“Linda Fager. The woman murdered that night. She loved cats and roses. She loved books. Her husband loved her more than he can say in words.”

“Yeah, well. I’m sorry what happened to her.” Her feet shifted to carry her back to the floor. He was losing her.

“Nice ink,” he said to keep her talking. He nodded at her tattoos. “That blue and green woven together. Almost glows.”

She turned her head so he could see her neck more clearly. He had missed the small skeletons entangled in the vines curling from clavicle to ear.

“I like it freaky.”

“Those tats make you look hard.”

“Thanks.”

“Harder than you really are.”

“I’ve got customers waiting.”

“Just one more second. Since you’re into freaky.” He reached inside his jacket, “Here’s something like nothing you’ve ever seen.”

He held the photo in front of her face so she could not miss a detail.

“He had pieces of her with him while he enjoyed the cold one you brought him,” he said to a young woman growing pale. “That really freaky skin art stapled to the wall.” He tapped the photo. “There above her body. That’s her face.”

She took a step back but couldn’t peel her eyes from the photograph.

“That wasn’t paint in his hair,” she said so quietly he barely heard her. “He said he hadn’t been painting.” She looked away, then back at the photograph. “Damn. I can’t do it now. Thanks a lot.”

“Do what? Is there some place we can talk?”

She blinked her eyes and took a breath.

“I need a cigarette. Wait here.”

She served her customers then led him out the front door, a few steps from the entrance. She fired up, dragged hard, kept repeating the same limited set of facts she had given him inside. She lit a second cigarette off the first and picked at a nail. Her eyes kept drifting to the photo, turned so she could see it.

“Laura, what do you mean that wasn’t paint in his hair? Tell me about that.”

“Shit. Alright.” She told him: About the dark, wet stuff in his hair and Geronimo’s hand inside his jacket like he had something alive in there. And yesterday a woman willing to pay crazy money for a beat-up bar table.

Down the street Montclaire, pressed into a doorway, wearing a cowboy hat and glasses, watched Laura Pasco blowing her shot at fifty grand. She had been hanging out in the bar to keep an eye on the waitress and had planned to follow her home after work. She wanted to see this workshop where Pasco said her boyfriend was working on the table before they talked money again. Now she had to worry Bronkowski might get the table before her.

She watched him showing a photograph to Pasco, saw her go pale and dig cigarettes out of her apron. Montclaire slipped out the side entrance and stood in a doorway as they talked on the street in front of the Howling Coyote.

The conversation ended. Pasco crushed a cigarette under her heel and went inside the bar. Bronkowski walked off down the street. She decided to follow him. She could return later to catch Pasco heading home.

As soon as Bronkowski was out of sight, Montclaire ran after him. She pulled up at the corner and saw him halfway down the block. Empty streets made it hard to tail him without being seen.

When he neared the Capitol she realized he was heading to Fager’s office. She took a shortcut through the Capitol’s grounds and arrived ahead of him. She slipped into her car and watched him approach. Instead of that cheap Camry she had seen him driving earlier, he mounted his Harley, kicked it to life, and roared onto Paseo de Peralta. She pulled out after him. The fact he took his bike suggested he was not going for the table right now.

He took major roads out of downtown then turned onto quiet residential streets winding past houses on big lots with automatic gates at the end of driveways. He stopped at one gate to speak into a box. A second later the gate slid back and he rode in.

Montclaire knew this place. It belonged to a man who did computerized investigative work. Thornton used his services. He was not in the furniture-moving business. Cody’s table was safe for another night.

Montclaire drove back to the Howling Coyote and changed from the cowboy hat and glasses to a straight black wig and turtleneck. She took a seat in the bar away from Pasco’s tables and ordered a Diet Coke. She had two hours until closing.

Bronkowski rolled up the gravel drive to the rambling adobe home where John Pitcairn ran his investigative services business. Pitcairn had called to report he already had results on the Gonzalez family trace. He worked nights. Midnight was a fine time to meet.

Pitcairn met him at the door. He was dressed in a bowtie and short-sleeved, button-down shirt with a pocket protector holding pens and pencils, and a phone and calculator in cases on his belt. Bronkowski always wanted to tell Pitcairn it was okay to stop dressing for the job at Los Alamos lab he had left long ago. Classical music played as Pitcairn led him to a living room converted to his central workspace. An office chair was surrounded by three connected desks with large monitors. File cabinets ran along the walls, behind a white greaseboard full of arrows and columns of names and numbers. A mobile sculpture with the wingspan of a small plane hung from the high ceiling, spinning above Pitcairn as he handed Bronkowski a manila folder.

“Coffee while you read?”

Bronkowski waved him off. Pitcairn was in the middle of his work day, Bronkowski was looking forward to bed.

“I’ll have more tomorrow,” Pitcairn said as he worked an elaborate brass Italian espresso machine squeezed between scrapped motherboards and vinyl binders. “I found activity ten years ago, the day after you said they disappeared from Santa Fe. A credit card issued to Estevan Gonzalez was used at locations along I-25 as far north as Cheyenne, then several times in Pinedale, Wyoming. The twenty-thousand and change balance on that card was paid off in one bite and all use ceased. Years of silence. No financial activity at all until Estevan started buying property recently.”

“Where?”

“Jackson Hole.” Pitcairn dropped a sugar cube into a demitasse and waited for the espresso machine to stop hissing and shaking. “A gutter-cleaning and yard-care company. Then a tire store. This year he bought a cute little cottage in Teton Village. There’s a view in the folder.”

Bronkowski paged through the report until he found the photograph. He whistled at the multi-story stone mansion against the backdrop of the Teton Range.

“It has a sixteen-seat movie theater,” Pitcairn said.

The Gonzalez family, minus Tasha, had come a long way from the single-wide on Santa Fe’s dusty south side.

“What does the guy do for this kind of money?”

“Nothing I can see. He was dormant, then his Spring arrived. Time to blossom.”

“Thanks, John. It’s a great start.”

“I’ll eyeball tax records tomorrow. Lovely thing about those police files you gave me. They’ve got DOBs, Social Security, INS and passport numbers, everything a fellow needs for a very good time.”

Outside, before getting on his bike, Bronkowski called Fager, knowing he’d be up, pounding at his computer, drinking cold coffee.

“That waitress was a nervous wreck just telling me she brought Geronimo a beer at the bar. She waits tables. That’s when I knew she was holding back. I’m going to be at her house tomorrow morning, get her out of bed before Montclaire shows up with her bag of money.”

“Marcy’s cleaning up after her sloppy client,” Fager said. “Taking a breather to grab a beer was a mistake. That blood in his hair was Linda’s and I’m betting he left some on that table. Tell that woman I’ll beat any offer from Montclaire.”

“My night’s done. Why don’t you shut it down? Mascarenas is not going to read any of those briefs you’re spitting out.”

“I’m going to petition to empanel a grand jury to investigate Linda’s murder. Press conference tomorrow. I’m hiring temporary staff to collect signatures, those enviros who go door-to-door on everything from whales to wolves. They’re in between rants right now, hungry for something to piss them off. We need two-thousand two-hundred and forty-one signatures to meet the statute’s threshold. The DA will have to act. This will force a special prosecutor. That’s going to be me.”

“Who’s this on our team?”

“And I’m filing that replevin action. To force Geronimo to turn over those bones he took from Linda. He’ll have to answer. I’ll get his deposition. Marcy will instruct her client to assert the Fifth. Fireworks ensue. That little civil suit will generate publicity for the petition drive. The media can’t slam me for chasing his money. I’m just trying to put all of my wife to rest, see justice done. That will be the story line. Sympathetic, something new for me.”

“Walt, get some sleep.”

Whales and wolves. For the first time he wondered if Fager knew what the hell he was doing.