Forty-One

This time Marcy Thornton served her ethics complaints using her law office’s runner. The envelope delivered to Fager’s office contained a copy of a complaint with the Disciplinary Board about Fager trespassing on Geronimo’s private property and causing criminal damage in the form of a cut lock on the front gate, a broken window, and a purloined security camera. She hit him with the catch-all rule, the cleanup batter at the end of the Code of Professional Conduct. Rule 16-804 was entitled, simply, “Misconduct.” It could cover anything a lawyer could stretch words to fit.

Thornton’s second ethics complaint walked the facts through several definitions of misconduct: paragraph (a), committing a criminal act that reflects adversely on the lawyer’s honesty and trustworthiness; paragraph (b), engaging in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation; paragraph (c) engaging in conduct prejudicial to the conduct of law; and, if that didn’t cover it, paragraph (d), engaging in any conduct that adversely reflects an attorney’s fitness to practice law.

She wanted the Supreme Court to disbar Fager and prohibit him from ever again practicing law in the state of New Mexico.

She asked the Disciplinary Board to order Fager to replace the busted lock and window, at nineteen dollars and ninety-eight cents for the lock and one hundred fifty-seven dollars for a window she suspected was actually broken by Aragon days before Fager went out there.

When Bronkowski entered his office, Fager ranted about the window for a solid ten minutes before mentioning anything about maybe losing his law license.

What he noticed was the smell. Fager had not gone home, showered, or changed out of the clothes he wore in jail. He needed a shave. He was living on coffee and sugar.

Fager was falling apart.

Bronkowski stepped away to tell Roberta Weldon to get breakfast for their boss, then made Fager shut up about Marcy Thornton and the fucking window already.

“Good news from down south. The U.S. Attorney has an announcement this afternoon. Geronimo’s their new most wanted.”

“I want him in the state pen, max wing, not a federal country club.”

“Walt, he could end up on the feds’ death row, which we don’t have any more.”

“He’ll live with hope that Congress will abolish capital punishment, or the president will commute his death sentence. I should have shot him when I had the chance.”

Fager dragged his hands across his face, stretching his cheeks, making his bloodshot eyes bulge. He sighed and downed half a cup of cold coffee.

“I might need to go to Texas,” Bronkowski said. “See a guy named Grady.”

“Who’s he?”

“Maybe somebody who’ll let me take apart a Cody Geronimo original.”

The night before, after he had seen Fager’s Mercedes towed from the impound lot to a detailing shop, Bronkowski took a cab to Fager’s to get his own car back. Then he swung past Geronimo’s gallery. He parked two blocks away. He didn’t want the car driven by Fager’s investigator identified and added to the evidence in Walt’s stalking case.

Walking back in the darkness he thought about Fager telling him Geronimo had Linda in one of those weird statues.

The gallery was completely dark. Peering through the windows he saw an empty floor. The statue Fager had seen had been moved out.

What was that crap Geronimo was feeding that lady dripping turquoise at the gallery opening, about a spirit within each of his statues? Her husband had smelled bullshit. But he still wrote the check. For the wife, insisting she sensed what the great Cody Geronimo sensed.

Fourteen graves. Fourteen statues.

Grady Fallon, oil man, enough money he’d burn three-hundred grand on something he’d just as soon throw out back with the trash. A guy like that should be easy to find.

He went home and searched the Internet for oil and gas producers in Texas and Oklahoma, throwing in the last state because he couldn’t be sure about placing the oil man’s accent. Good thing. Under the membership tab for the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association he found Grady Fallon, CEO of Tomahawk Pipe and Casing, Oklahoma City.

He’d made that drive across two panhandles plenty of times. He could do it in six hours. By the time he knocked on Grady Fallon’s door, the whole country would have heard about bodies coming out of the ground next to the house in the desert.