LITMIR.BIZ

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      Again Naranjo intervened. “It’s slender, about thirty inches long, with a face carved in the wood.”

      He recorded the information. Then he passed the notepad to Naranjo. “Write down a phone number where I can reach you. Are you staying in town?”

      “We thought maybe you could get the ahayu:da back today,” Naranjo said.

      He shook his head in disbelief. They didn’t expect much, did they? “That depends. I’ll talk to Soto, but I can’t promise anything. For all I know, he might have already sold the ahayu:da. Or the letter might be a hoax. I’ll get in touch with you as soon as I can.”

      “Then we’ll stay in town,” Suino said.

      He didn’t like the way Suino said that. It sounded like a threat. “Suit yourself.”

      Suino sprang to his feet and pulled the baseball cap lower on his forehead. Naranjo nodded, sighing as he got to his feet. He gave him an apologetic look, and then turned and followed his young companion into the dimly lit corridor outside his office.

      Relieved to be alone, he settled back in his chair to relax. His mind began to clear, a process that seemed to take longer the older he got. Lately he’d been thinking about retiring. His wife wanted him to. His daughters, too.

      They’d also convinced him to stop smoking. He finally gave in to their complaints and surprised them this past spring. They didn’t know he still carried around his emergency pack of Camel Lights. What had his wife said last night? Something about his face being as wrinkled as a saguaro cactus. She blamed smoking for all his troubles, including the wrinkles, but he wasn’t so sure.

      Who wouldn’t have wrinkles after thirty years of police work? Too many people with bad attitudes. That was a fact.

      He didn’t look forward to questioning Soto. Rich gallery owners were some of his least favorite people. He didn’t know much about Soto, just that he’d bought Sabado Indian Arts on the Plaza. He’d seen Soto only once, at some function at City Hall. He couldn’t remember the occasion, but he did remember the small man in the linen suit, very outgoing, a natural salesman. With his short black hair slicked back, Soto looked like a gigolo from a 1930s Hollywood movie. Hard to forget.

      He took the opportunity to step outside for a breath of fresh air, just to clear his head. When he returned, he decided he needed another cup of coffee before making any decisions about how to proceed with this ahayu:da business, so he went down the hall to the coffee machine. He didn’t like to drink coffee that came from a concession machine, but at the moment he didn’t want to walk down the street to the Great Burrito Company.

      From the hallway he spotted Fidel Rodriguez talking to the police dispatcher at the front counter. Sure as the sun rose every morning, Fidel or one of the other metro reporters from the Santa Fe Independent would show up at the station about eight o’clock to read the police log for the latest criminal activity in the area. They loved the juicy stories, the murder and mayhem stuff. Fidel was one of the few reporters he admired because Fidel didn’t sensationalize.

      Fidel had manners. That was more than he could say for most of the hotshots who worked for the Independent.

      “Fidel.” He held up his cup.

      “Are you buying?” Fidel, a small dapper man wearing a blue work shirt and red paisley tie, minus the jacket, asked.

      “Sure, if you can drink this shit,” he grumbled.

      Fidel stuffed a notebook in his back pocket and stepped behind the counter.

      He inserted more quarters in the coffee machine and handed Fidel a small paper cup filled with murky black liquid. “Santa Fe Concessions.” He shook his head. “I think they’re trying to poison us.”

      “Doing a pretty good job, too. You look like hell.”

      “Yeah, that’s what my wife says. She tells me I’m smoking too much.”

      “I thought you quit.”

      “I did, sort of.”

      Fidel laughed. “So what do you have for me this morning? Any road kill last night?”

      “Road kill? I hate that expression.”

      “Sorry, cabrón. Just a little humor.”

      While they talked, the police dispatcher answered a telephone call at the front desk. Linda Stephens jotted down the information and then turned to him. “Hey, Fernando, this must be your lucky day.”

      He liked Linda, a leftover hippie from the 1970s who’d managed to preserve her sardonic sense of humor. He saw her peering over the counter at him, steel-gray Afro, thick glasses, and a big smile on her face. From years of experience he knew what her smile meant—big trouble.

      “Yeah?” he asked tentatively, not really wanting to know.

      “Guy by the name of José Padilla just called to report a homicide in Jacoñita.” Linda pushed the glasses back on her nose.

      “Jacoñita? Where’s Jacoñita?”

      “You know, out by San Ildefonso Pueblo.”

      He nodded, remembering.

      “Guess who our lucky victim is?”

      Expecting the worst, he wasn’t disappointed when he heard Linda say, “Michael Soto.”

      2

      He shaded his eyes from the glare of the sunlight striking the tin roof of José Padilla’s house and wished he hadn’t forgotten his sunglasses. Just last week his wife had bought him an expensive pair that were supposed to block out 99.9 percent of all harmful rays. Estelle liked to warn him about cataracts, caused by too much sun coming through the deteriorating ozone layer. Leave it to his wife to always find something new to worry about.

      Not surprisingly, Tomas Trujillo hadn’t forgotten his sunglasses. The Ray-Bans were an essential part of his look, as were the short-sleeve shirts rolled up even shorter to reveal the bulging muscles left over from his days as a linebacker on the Santa Fe High School football team that won the state championship a few years back. He didn’t care much for Trujillo—a deputy sheriff from Santa Fe Country—for the simple reason that Trujillo could never stop playing the tough guy. Trujillo had a short fuse and was always getting into trouble with his superiors for slapping people around. One of these days he would slap the wrong person and get his ass suspended.

      He patted the pack of Camel Lights in his shirt pocket, always there if he needed them, while he listened to Trujillo and Padilla argue over by the crumbling adobe wall near the house. Padilla was a lousy liar, no doubt about it. He claimed not to have discovered Soto’s body until eight this morning, a few minutes before calling 911. That story wasn’t going to wash with anyone, because Soto had been dead at least eight hours by the time he and the lab technicians arrived.

      The Porsche, with Soto’s body inside, had been parked all night in Padilla’s yard, no more than thirty feet from his front door. Not even a jury of his Hispanic peers would believe Padilla slept that soundly.

      “Don’t give me that bullshit,” Trujillo said. “What happened last night? Why did you wait until this morning to call us?”

      “I told you.” Padilla nervously glanced from Trujillo to Fidel, who was listening to their conversation and scribbling notes in his small reporter’s notebook.

      “I noticed the car when I came out this morning. I was on my way to Santa Fe to buy groceries, and when I opened my gate—”

      Trujillo stopped Padilla before he could finish the sentence. “Come on, you’re not dressed to go shopping.”

      True, he thought. Padilla didn’t look all that presentable, wearing filthy white painter’s pants and a soiled blue denim work shirt. Not much of a looker anyway, with his wrinkled fifty-something face, he hadn’t helped his appearance any by not shaving or combing his hair. He reeked of smoke, as

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