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“No problem, Sheriff.” Pepper turned to her two crew men and said, “Go to the motel and relax until I get back.” She moved beside Rockman and hooked her arm in his, saying, “Now, where can we go and talk in private?”
Wayne took her to his office and Pepper borrowed a yellow lined pad and pen and waited for him to talk. Wayne was sparse in his words, but Pepper asked clarifications and expanded his story to add flesh and breathe life into it. Rockman talked of his efforts in figuring out the players involved in smuggling farm equipment to Mexico. He said Bobby Mata had been the ringleader, and Wayne was closing in, ready to make an arrest, when Mata’s body was found.
Pepper nodded in the right places, elicited examples of Rockman’s special efforts, and following a reporter’s hunch, led his story away from Mata and to the flourishing drug and weapons trade. Rockman talked easily about it, including personal stories of his own accomplishments and investigations, his assumptions and what he was going to do next. Pepper read between the lines, and asked questions to confirm her suspicions. She fleshed out Rockman’s part in the shootout at Santa Elena Canyon, and got the Sheriff’s opinion of why the song, El Lobo y la Tejana, was so popular. She asked about Hunter, and Wayne talked a little, but Pepper felt it was a door that would take too much effort to open, so she maneuvered the conversation back to smuggling organizations in Mexico. Rockman gave a history of the region, starting with the Mexican Revolution and the gunrunning, then went to prohibition and the smuggling of liquor, up to illegal aliens, then the burgeoning drug trade, to include massive amounts of cocaine and heroin.
Two hours into the interview, Rockman’s phone rang and he paused to answer it. He spoke little, but his face darkened and his mouth thinned. He wrote down some things on a notepad. He asked, “Where, exactly?” then paused and said, “When?” Rockman listened for another minute and ended the conversation with, “I’ll head down,” then he hung up. From his demeanor, Pepper knew the interview was over. Wayne rose from behind his desk, tore off the top sheet of paper from his notepad, and put it in his shirt pocket. He walked around the desk to the gun safe to open it, saying over his shoulder, “I’m afraid we need to cut this short, Ms. Easton.”
“No problem, Sheriff. Do you want to read my notes now?”
“We’ll have to do it later.”
“How about I take these pages and fax them back from El Paso to you. I won’t go forward until you give your okay.”
“That’ll be fine,” Rockman removed a pump shotgun and a box of shells. He hesitated, then opened a drawer and took out a pistol wrapped in cloth. Wayne tossed the cloth back in the drawer and slipped the nickle-plated .45 semi-auto behind his back, under the belt.
Pepper’s eyebrows arched. Rockman was now carrying two pistols and a shotgun. “Thanks for the interview.” She tore off the yellow pages she’d written on and leaned over his desk to place the yellow lined pad on it. When she did, Pepper palmed the Sheriff’s notepad and slipped it into her purse. “I’ll be talking to you.”
Rockman didn’t answer. He seemed focused on preparing for something dangerous as he placed the shotgun on his desk and got a pair of military lace-up boots from the closet. He sat in his chair and changed footwear.
Pepper left the Sheriff’s office as a blue sedan pulled up, and a flush-faced man in a tan suit got out and hurried up the steps. He took off his hat as he met her, then stopped cold and watched her walk by. He didn’t move again until she got in her car, then he hurried in the door, hat in hand.
Pepper went to her motel room and slipped in without her next-room crew seeing her. She took the notepad and a pencil out of her purse. Pepper gently rubbed the pencil lead sideways across the blank paper and Rockman’s notes ghosted into legibility.
She grinned at the goose bumps on her arms. “Yes!” she said and pumped her arm. This was the big one that would put her face on the national news. Pepper picked up her purse and went out, quietly closing the door behind her and going to her car. She was on the road to Presidio in less than a minute.
***
Elvis Guzman was the first to wake to the pounding on the shed door. “Whass wrong out there, man?” He said.
A voice outside said in English, “You will pay for information, yes? Information about a little Indian girl?”
The others stirred, and Felipe Godoy raised his head off a rusty anvil and looked at Elvis, whose vaseline/charcoal sideburns had smeared over his cheeks and eye sockets during the night so that E looked like a Navy Seal with camouflage face paint. Felipe shook the image from his mind and turned to face the door. He asked, “Who are you?”
“My name is Raul. I found her last night, but she was taken from me by force.”
Elvis said, “Raal, whass this you talkin’ about here, man?”
The voice was tentative, “Is that you, Elvis? Well, they say your friends here have a reward for people if maybe they got information on a little Indian girl in town.”
Felipe sat up, and the Barbosas groaned as they climbed out of a broken corncrib on hands and knees. Felipe said, “Where is she?”
“How much you paying’?”
Felipe stood up. “One hundred dollars up front, another five hundred when we see her.”
Raul was silent. Felipe asked, “Are you still there?”
“Yes, but would you open the door so I may see you? It’s uncomfortable, this talking to a door.”
Felipe stepped over Elvis and opened the door, “Who took her from you?” he asked.
Raul looked at Elvis and couldn’t talk for a moment, then sputtered, “Oh, there were many men, maybe a dozen. I fought like a tiger, but they tore her from my hands.”
Jesse Barbosa stood up with his brother and said, “That’s bullshit. We saw you out cold in front of El Longbranch, and there weren’t even two men around, much less a dozen.”
Raul looked at Jesse’s wig and Johnny’s innertube with the stem and smiled. He flexed his weightlifter’s chest and arms, “Maybe you wan’ to come out here and say it to my face, call me a liar up close. Why don’t you do that, uh?”
Je
