Leaphorn-Chee 16 - The Sinister Pig - by Tony Hillerman

Author:Tony Hillerman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Police Procedural, Detective and Mystery Stories, Police, Leaphorn, Mystery & Detective, Navajo Indians, General, Jim (Fictitious Character), Indian Reservation Police, Chee, Joe, New Mexico, Fiction, Cultural Heritage, Lt. (Fictitious Character)
ISBN: 9780061098789
Publisher: HarperTorch
Published: 2003-01-02T06:00:00+00:00

17

Leaphorn was out in his driveway searching his car for a notebook he had left somewhere.

“Joe!” Louisa Bourbonette shouted. “Telephone.”

“Can you take a number. Tell ’em I’ll call ’em. I want to find these notes.”

“It’s long distance. A woman named Garza. From Rodeo, wherever that is.”

Leaphorn hustled up the walk, said thanks, took the phone, said, “This is Joe Leaphorn.”

“I’m Eleanda Garza. A Customs patrol officer with the Border Patrol. And I’m Bernadette Manuelito’s housemate. I think you’re a friend of hers.”

“I am,” Leaphorn said. “Is she all right?”

“Fine. Just homesick and lonesome. But she had some information she wanted me to pass along to you.”

Mrs. Garza thereupon started at the beginning. Bernie taking the pictures at the Tuttle Ranch of the exotic animals and the work project. Ed Henry, her supervisor, telling her she had violated an arrangement Customs had with the ranch, described the arrangement, described Henry photographing Bernie, told of Bernie arresting the four illegals and their driver and how the driver had recognized Bernie—telling her that drug operators in Agua Prieta had copies of the photo Henry had taken, and they had the idea that Bernie was some sort of special agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Halfway through this account Leaphorn sat himself on the car’s fender, but he didn’t interrupt.

“Any questions?” Mrs. Garza asked.

“Not until you’re finished,” he said.

“I am.”

“OK. How do you know Mr. Henry took the photograph?”

Garza explained.

“And these illegals, were they in the drug traffic?”

“The driver told Bernie he had been, in a minor way. Some driving for them but he’d been afraid, and quit.”

“How about the other four?”

She described them with names, and their reasons for immigrating after failing to find work at the old smelter.

“That smelter. At San Pedro de los Corralitos, I think you said. You know anything about that?”

“Not much. I think it was running all through World War II when the price was so high and then on into the l960s until the price went down. And the old man, Mr. Gomez, said there were rumors it was reopening and hiring people. I had heard those rumors, too. My aunt wrote me about them way last year. She said everybody thought there would be jobs again, but nothing was happening.”

“You have family down there?”

Mrs. Garza laughed. “I have family all over Sonora. Garzas, and Tapias, and Montoyas. I was a Tapia, and my great-uncle Jorge Tapia, he ran one of the furnaces there at San Pedro de los Corralitos for Anaconda when they had the smelter. But then they sold it to Phelps Dodge and he got laid off. But that was when I was a little girl. Now my aunt said another company had bought it, and everybody thought the mine there would open again and the smelter would be hiring. But no.” Mrs. Garza paused, inhaled, sighed.

“That didn’t happen?”

“She said a crew came in to dig up part of that old gas line and fixed it up. One of my nephews did some of the dirt moving.

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