24

The crowd suddenly drew back and looked skyward. The tension of days waiting to fly could no longer be contained, and all around them the balloons began to rise. They rose in waves, according to the flight plan, a bustle of balloons, the zebras whistling and rushing, trying to keep order, shouting instructions as row upon row of the hot-air globes was released from the bond of earth, exploding into a kaleidoscope of colors against the bright, blue sky.

Pregnant with the hot-blue burning propane, the balloons rose suddenly into the open sky. Baskets swung free of tethered lines, carrying pilots and passengers upward. Excited crews left behind shouted hurrahs as the balloons rose, and the crowd of thousands joined in the shout, a salute to the flight. Shouts of joy, amazement, and exclamation vibrated across the field, making the earth tremble. The echo swept across the dusty field and rose up and away with the balloons.

In the dazzling glory of sunrise, the flowers had exploded, blossomed, and were now rising. The beauty of the mass ascension left everyone dumbfounded.

When the sound died away, like thunder dying away as it rumbles in the summer thunderstorms, it was replaced by gasps of awe, the click of camera shutters, mothers calling to children to get a better view.

Amid the regular pear-shaped balloons rose the unique ones, those in the shape of a cow, an Uncle Sam, a Mickey Mouse, and other creatures from American mythology. A balloon in the shape of a bottle of scotch, a Pepsi can, a roll of film, a dinosaur, and other huge, fantastic shapes.

The children pointed and waved at the passengers in the tiny baskets who were suddenly out of reach, rising into the cloudless sky. They called good-byes, wished them a safe flight, cried “See you later alligator,” shrieked and laughed and ran, following the flight of the quickly ascending balloons.

Those lucky enough to be flying smiled and waved down at those they left earthbound. They, too, shouted good-byes, then turned their attention to the huge panorama of sky around them, land below them. This was it! The climb to catch the prevailing wind! The excitement of flight!

The loudspeakers announced the pilots of the balloons as they passed over the television stand. For those at home the mass ascension was being televised and radioed into homes throughout the city.

Sonny looked up. The excitement brought him no joy. Raven still held Rita. Finding the tank full of coke had been a lucky guess, perhaps too easy. Madge was too cooperative. Something was missing.

Joe Flannery approached Sonny.

“You helped us bust a big one,” he said. “I personally want to thank you …” He held out his hand.

The newspeople swarmed around them, pushing up against Sonny, firing questions. Each wanted the scoop of reporting that a stash of cocaine had just been found at the balloon fiesta. Cameras focused on the spilled cocaine.

“How’d you know?” Francine Hunter called.

Sonny looked at Flannery. Could he really trust the sonofabitch? He didn’t mind who got the credit for finding the coke; all he had wanted was a lead to Rita.

“Forget it,” Sonny said, and pushed by Flannery.

“Sonny!” A harried Francine Hunter followed him. “How did you know? How big is the bust? Can I ask you a few questions? Peter, get a shot—”

“I can’t talk,” Sonny replied.

“How’d you know the dope was here?” she repeated, pushing the mike closer to Sonny.

“There is no dope here!” Sonny snapped, walking away.

“But we heard the coke was brought in by the Cali cartel. Does this mean they have a foothold in New Mexico?”

Sonny spun and faced her. “Foothold? They own the state! They own the country! They make crack for the barrios and make slaves! Where in the hell have you been! Now get off my back!”

“You’re pissed,” she responded, still holding the mike forward. “I understand that, but this is big! I’ve got to get this story!”

Peter had stopped shooting film. “Give the man a break,” he said softly. “He’s got other things on his mind.”

Francine looked from him to Sonny. “Yeah, right. Sorry—”

Her words lingered in the air as Sonny hurried away.

At Fiesta Control a jubilant Chief Garcia came forward to greet Sonny. “We got every single tank on the list! We got ’em cold. Thanks to you.” He smiled magnanimously.

“You got nothing,” Sonny replied.

“What?”

Sonny shook his head. “It was too easy.” Number 47 had been moored too close to Fiesta Control. Too convenient. One of those false clues Raven loved to set.

“Come on, Sonny. Whaddaya mean?”

Joe Flannery and two of his agents had followed Sonny into the building. Now he stepped forward.

“You keeping something from us, Baca? ’Cause if you are—”

“Open the tanks,” Sonny answered. A gnawing feeling tore at his empty stomach. A link was missing in the operation. The DEA had stepped in only after Sonny busted Bobby Lee, and the FBI was hanging back. Not a single agent in sight. Why?

He looked at Madge. She stared back, her cold blue eyes hiding what she really knew.

“I’ll take the tanks downtown,” Flannery said, “have them opened in our lab—”

“Open them now!” Sonny insisted.

“Sonny,” Garcia said sternly, “it’s his jurisdiction. I want to talk to the people we’ve arrested. There’s a chance they know something about Rita. That’s my concern right now.”

“They know zero,” Sonny responded. He grabbed a pair of pliers from a nearby tool chest and opened the safety valve on the nearest tank. The rotten-egg smell of propane filled the air. Sonny opened another and again the gas shot out.

“Gas!” Flannery shouted, a surprised look crossing his face. He looked at Garcia. “Fucking tanks are full of gas!”

Madge moved forward to shut off the tank valves. “There’s no dope,” she whispered.

“Damn!” Garcia cursed and looked at Sonny. “We’ve been had!”

Flannery looked at Sonny and almost grinned. “Looks like my congratulations came too early.” He shrugged. “You found a kilo of coke, that’s all. The rest is gas. So where’s the big shipment you had us chasing?”

“Don’t you know?” Sonny replied, tossing the pliers so a startled Flannery had to catch them.

“Listen, Baca, I don’t like the insinuation,” Flannery snarled, stepping forward. Then he eased back. “Ah, what the hell. Think what you want! What we’ve got here is a kilo of coke, nothing more.”

He turned to Madge. “Might as well let the press in. What we’ve got here is a small bust. No big deal. Sonny Baca’s been wasting our time. I’d like to use your office.”

She nodded. Sonny, the chief, and Madge stood in silence, watching as one of the agents let in the herd of reporters who had waited impatiently outside.

“I told you we were clean,” Madge said. “Whoever did this wanted the fiesta to get a black eye. One guy brings in a little coke, we get a bad rep. But we’re clean.”

“What the hell is going on?” Garcia asked in exasperation. He had made a fool of himself in front of the news media, talking about this arrest as if it were the bust of the century, and he didn’t want to think about his next “meet the press” with only a kilo.

“While we were chasing balloons, the shipment was delivered,” Sonny explained.

“What?” Garcia muttered.

“It was never meant to come here,” Sonny said, looking intently at Madge. “This was a decoy. They planted enough clues to lead us here. They let us bust Bobby Lee, who will be out on bond tomorrow. In the meantime, the drugs were delivered. Courtesy of UPS.”

Garcia moaned. “If you’re right, there’s a hundred ways to get it out of the city. Once the shipment is split up, they’re safe!”

Madge turned to Sonny. “Look, I’m sorry your plan didn’t work, but it proved what I’ve said all along: we had nothing to do with it.”

“Rita’s what’s important now,” Garcia said.

Sonny shrugged. “Raven’s made his deal, he’s got the money.”

“So he can try to blow up another WIPP truck,” Garcia said.

“No.” Sonny shook his head. “This time it’s going to be bigger.” He looked at the police chief. “How far do you trust Flannery?” he asked, and Garcia winced.

“They’ve kept me in the dark,” the police chief replied. “Right now I trust no one.”

“It’s about time they talked,” Sonny said through gritted teeth. He was angry because the drugs had sifted through his hands; angry because once the dope was on the streets, it would poison all the poor neighborhoods of the country. And he was really angry because the chase had taken his time, time he needed to find Rita. The sonsofbitches had led him to another dead end.

“Where’s Stammer?” he asked Madge.

“He’s gone. Probably at his lab. Look, the man’s under a lot of stress, overworked.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Sonny replied, and walked to the door.

“Where are you going?” Garcia called.

“To church,” Sonny replied.

Whoever had sliced Gilroy’s throat was an expert. First Veronica, then Secco, then Gilroy. Deaths they wanted him to connect to the balloon fiesta, but which really had roots in decades of drug trade.

Yeah, everything had been orchestrated, everything in place, everything calculated to lead the local law and Sonny down the wrong avenues. And it had worked. Now it was time to go to the source!

In his truck Sonny dialed home and listened through the messages on his machine. One was from Diego. Sonny dialed him.

“Sonny, glad you called,” Diego said when he answered. “I’ve been on the phone, calling old friends. The deal was made! The dope’s in the city by now.”

“Yeah,” Sonny acknowledged, “I know.”

“And no word on Rita and my hijita. I feel useless as hell sitting here. I’m afraid, Sonny. I’m afraid for my little girl. And her mother’s a wreck, too.”

“Hang in there.” Sonny tried to comfort his friend. “I’m going to try something. I’ll check with you later.”

“Cuidado,” Diego said.

“Don’t have time to be careful,” Sonny replied.

He had been thinking of the move he had to make. There was one man in town who knew all about the old CIA connections in Central America. One man who knew Gilroy, who knew the games that U.S. Customs and the DEA were playing. William Stone.

He called Ruth Jamison at the public library.

“Hi, Ruth. Sonny Baca.”

“Sonny, are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Listen. I’m in a hurry. What did you find on Stone?”

“Only the newspaper and magazine clippings. There are FBI and CIA files that would be very interesting, but that takes time through Freedom of Information. And files like that get purged. What I have are mostly articles from the Washington Post, the New York Times, et cetera. Stuff most people know.”

Over the phone she sketched out Gilroy’s and Stone’s involvement.

Unlike Gilroy, Stone was a smooth operator. Educated in the Ivy League, he had worked in the foreign service before transferring to the CIA. He had made a name for himself during the Sandinista takeover of Managua. Some said it was Stone’s helicopter that flew Somoza out of the beleaguered capital as it fell. After that the White House gave him the go-ahead to carry out covert operations to supply the Contras.

The right-wing Libertad commandos’ murderous methods of extracting information from the Sandinistas were reported in the papers in Latin America. Not a word of Stone’s activities was reported in the North American papers.

Sandinista prisoners were taken up in helicopters, questioned, made to confess, then pushed out. But the murdering ways of a covert war gone sour began to tarnish the image of the Contras and their Washington backers.

Then the Gilroy incident broke. Reporters began to dig into Gilroy’s past, and the chief operator of Libertad was revealed: William Stone. Those senators who had approved of the clandestine operations to fund the Contras protected Stone and turned on Gilroy.

“The best I could do,” Ruth said, “is find his phone number.”

“You got his number?” Sonny said.

“A friend at the phone company,” she said. “Stone is staying with friends. Very rich and conservative folks who fund right-wing militia groups in the state,” Ruth whispered, and read Sonny the phone number.

“You’re great,” Sonny said.

“Anytime,” she answered. “I hope you find Rita soon,” she added. “I’m praying.”

“Yeah,” he whispered, “me too.”

He hung up and dialed Stone’s number.

Overhead the sky was clear. Most of the balloons had landed safely. Nobody shot, no accidents, the fiesta board was in charge again, the fiesta could be saved, the money would flow safely into the cash registers of the city after all.

There was only one more thing to do: find Rita and the girl.

A man answered.

“Billy the Kid?” Sonny said.

There was a pause on the other end. Then, “Who is this?”

“Juan Libertad,” Sonny replied. He knew he had to get Stone’s interest quickly.

“You’ve got the wrong number—”

“Come on, Billy, I’ve got the right number.”

There was only a slight pause, then: “Are you a reporter?”

Sonny laughed. “Would a reporter named Juan Libertad call you? No, I’m not a reporter, but I know who killed Gilroy.”

“Then go to the police,” Stone answered.

“You don’t really want me to do that, do you? Names will begin to fly, and yours might come up. No, I need to talk to you in private, Mr. Stone.”

Sonny hoped he wouldn’t spook the man and lose him. Stone laughed. “You don’t make sense, Juan. What is it you want?”

“I want to sell you information. You should talk to me.”

“Who are you?” Stone asked.

Got him! Sonny thought. He’s interested!

“I told you, Juan Libertad,” Sonny replied.

He paused, waited. Would Stone really take the bait? He was a pro, and no fool. He had survived the intricate plots before the Cold War ended, survived Nicaragua, and now if Sonny was right, he was surviving as an insider in the cartels that provided the world its daily fix.

It was Stone’s turn to appear disinterested, cool. He laughed again. “I don’t know a Juan Libertad. Exactly what is it you want?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“To sell information.” Stone chuckled, still being cautious. “I’m not in the market. If you really know who killed Gilroy, go to the police.”

“I have a photograph,” Sonny interrupted, knowing he was on the brink of losing the big man.

“Photograph? So?”

“In the picture you’re going into a building in Bogota. A brick building. You’re being met on the steps by a man known to be a cartel boss.”

Sonny described the building, then held his breath. It was his last trump. Stone also held his breath, or at least he waited awhile before he responded.

“I took a vacation in Bogota,” he said. “Anybody could have taken a photograph.”

“It’s one of a kind,” Sonny cut in. “Even a vacation photograph has some value. For the family scrapbook.”

Stone laughed again. “Yes, to keep the album complete. You’ve twisted my arm, Juan. I’ll talk to you. Where?”

“Old Town,” Sonny replied. “In the church at twelve. Sit ten pews from the front. You are there praying. Don’t bring anyone with you.”

“I’ll be there,” Stone replied, and the phone went dead. Sonny breathed relief. Ah, the man had taken the bait, was hooked, and hooked men always had something to hide.

Sonny glanced at his watch. Where was Raven now? Where was Rita?