The Big Gamble (30 page)

“Tell me what you want specifically,” Perkins said, “and I’ll pull it from the financial accounting archives.”

“It’s for one month only,” Kerney replied, giving Perkins the date. “Fax it to my office.”

“When do you need it?”

“About eleven years ago,” Kerney said.

“What?”

“ASAP, Bill, and thanks.”

 

Jeff Vialpando’s second interview with Sally Greer resulted in the full name and address of the other woman Ramona had seen in the hotel bar the night she’d tailed Greer from her apartment. The woman was Stacy Fowler, and she lived in a town-house complex in the North Valley close to the Rio Grande bosque a few miles from Old Town, site of the original Hispanic settlement founded during the Spanish reign in the Southwest.

After arranging protective custody at a safe location for Greer, Jeff and Ramona paid a visit to Fowler’s residence, only to find her gone. They decided to stake out the town house and wait for Fowler to show.

Jeff took the first watch while Ramona catnapped, her head resting on her bundled-up jacket, which she’d wedged between the window and the car seat. He watched her sleep, studied her pretty face, and wondered what it would be like to wake up next to her in the morning. It was a pleasant thought that kept him occupied until he fell asleep.

The sun was in Jeff’s face when Ramona shook him awake.

“She’s here,” Ramona said.

“How long have I been dozing?”

“An hour,” Ramona replied. “You look cute when you’re asleep. That goes on the plus side of the ledger.”

“You’re keeping score on me?” Jeff said, rubbing his face.

“You bet. Let’s go.”

An unhappy Stacy Fowler let them in and stood in the living room with her arms crossed, her chin stuck out in a pose of sassy defiance. Her round eyes protruded slightly, giving her face a baby-doll appearance.

“I don’t know any Sally Greer,” she said.

“That’s funny,” Ramona said. “There’s a picture of you with Sally on the Internet.”

“You got a warrant?” Fowler asked.

“We don’t need one,” Ramona replied. “You let us in, remember?”

“So now get out,” Fowler said, casting her gaze at the door.

“We would all have to leave together,” Ramona said.

“Why?”

“Jail,” Vialpando said.

Fowler was silent for a minute, then she flipped her dark hair with a toss of her head. “Okay, let’s go.”

“This isn’t a prostitution bust, Stacy,” Ramona said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We’re talking about murder,” Jeff said.

Fowler’s plucked eyebrows arched. “That’s crazy.”

“It’s not even a stretch,” Ramona said. “You were with Greer in Ruidoso. We know she told you about the john that beat her up and got iced for it.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“That makes you a material witness.”

Fowler gave Ramona a suspicious look. “What kind of bullshit is that?”

Ramona bluffed. “The kind that would make a judge agree to put you in jail without bail if you refuse to cooperate. You’d stay there until you talked.”

“We can avoid all of that,” Vialpando said.

“Talking to you wouldn’t be good for my health.”

“Not talking could make things worse for you,” Jeff said.

“How’s that?”

“We’ll spread the word that you’re our snitch.”

“Jesus,” Fowler said.

“You’re new in town,” Jeff said. “Did Tully bring you here, or was it Norvell?”

“Or Rojas?” Ramona added.

The names cracked Fowler’s composure a bit more. She uncrossed her arms and put her hands out as if to ward off an attack. “What are you after?”

“The people who run the organization,” Vialpando answered.

“They’d crucify me if I talked to you,” Fowler said, her eyes searching for an escape. “You don’t know how powerful they are.”

“We know how powerful they
think
they are,” Ramona said. “But unless you help us bring them down, you really don’t have much of an option.”

Vialpando stepped to Fowler and touched her arm. “Help us, and we’ll help you,” he said gently. “Sit down and talk to us.”

Fowler nodded, reconsidered her decision, put on a false smile behind a scared expression, and said, “I do couples. Maybe . . .”

“Don’t even go there,” Vialpando said quickly. He led Fowler to a chair and sat her down. “You worked out of Phoenix before coming here. Tell us about the organization.”

Fowler frowned and bit her lip. “No bust, and I get a free ride?”

“Exactly,” Jeff replied, sitting across from Fowler. “Plus protection for as long as you need it.”

Fowler’s lips twitched nervously. She reached for a pack of cigarettes on the end table and lit one. “Okay. Rojas runs Phoenix and all the Texas services. Tully does the same in Denver and here. Each city has a manager who oversees the day-to-day stuff—bookings, screening and billing clients, paying the girls, arranging housing.”

“Who’s the Albuquerque manager?” Ramona asked.

“Cassie Bedlow. She’s been providing girls for the other locations through her modeling agency for years.”

“What about Norvell?” Jeff asked.

“He supplies a venue for special occasions.”

“What’s that all about?” Ramona asked.

“He has a place where rich men can meet privately with a girl like for a vacation. You can’t book it for less than a week, and it’s expensive. Fifty grand for the cottage, and then whatever the girl costs. That can run between five and ten thousand a day, sometimes more. Some clients bring their own women with them. For that, they have to pay a hefty surcharge. It’s got five or six cottages, and they’re always full. I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard it brings in movie stars, politicians, celebrity jocks—men like that—from all over the country.”

“So it’s a place where rich guys can play house,” Vialpando said.

Fowler smirked and blew smoke through her nose. “Yeah, along with their favorite sex games. S and M, domination, fetishes, bondage—whatever they want, including drugs.”

“Where is this place?” Ramona asked.

“Outside Ruidoso,” Fowler replied. “I’m not sure where. It’s on a ranch.”

“How do the finances work?” Ramona asked. “Who pays the bills? Where does the money go?”

“I don’t know. We get paid in cash weekly, plus any expenses. Tips and gifts we get to keep.”

“What about drugs?” Vialpando asked.

“Whatever you want, but just for the girls and clients. There’s no street selling or dealing. Mostly it’s coke, crack, and pot, along with some meth. If a girl uses, the cost is deducted from her pay.”

“Are you a user, Stacy?” Ramona asked.

“Sometimes.” She stubbed out her smoke. “It makes going to work a whole lot easier.”

“Are you strung out now?”

“A little bit.”

“We’ll get you into detox,” Ramona said.

They wound up the interview and turned Fowler over to detectives who’d been waiting for their call. Jeff drove Ramona back to her unit.

“Next time we spend a night together, let’s not do it in a car,” Jeff said with a smile as he wheeled in behind Ramona’s vehicle.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Sergeant,” Ramona said.

“I’m just suggesting a change in
venue,
nothing more.”

Ramona laughed. “I’ll see you in Santa Fe at the meeting.”

 

Clayton woke to an empty house and checked the bedside clock. It was after nine. Either he’d slept hard or Grace had tiptoed around, keeping the kids quiet before taking them off to day care and going to work. He put in a call to Paul Hewitt only to learn that the sheriff was out of the office until noon.

He went to the local newspaper’s office and searched through back issues for anything that mentioned Tyler Norvell. There were plenty of stories on normal political activity: speeches he’d made, legislation he supported or opposed, positions he took on social problems. The guy was a right-to-work, anti-abortion, three-strikes-and-you’re-out conservative. Judging from the voter sentiment discussed in the articles, he drew a lot of support from middle-class Texans who’d moved to Ruidoso looking for a less expensive Southwestern version of the Aspen lifestyle.

Clayton dug deeper and found a news item in the business section. A year before running for the state senate, Norvell had bought the Bluewater Canyon Ranch, a twenty-thousand-acre spread outside the small settlement of Arabella on the east side of the Capitan Mountains.

In his short time with the department Clayton had been to Arabella twice on routine patrols. There wasn’t much to the place: a few whitewashed, shuttered adobe buildings, several old barns, a vacation cottage or two, maybe a half-dozen year-round residences, and some outlying ranches along the paved road that ended at the village.

It was a pretty spot, a good seventeen miles off the main highway to Roswell, in rolling country against the sharp backdrop of the mountains.

In his unit Clayton consulted a government reference map that highlighted all publicly and privately owned land in the state. It was a useful tool for determining the boundaries for law-enforcement jurisdictions. He found Bluewater Canyon on private land a bit south of Arabella. There wasn’t time to drive up and look around before the sheriff returned to the office, so Clayton decided to see what he could learn through official records.

If Norvell had turned the Bluewater Canyon Ranch into a secret sex playground, as Clayton suspected, then he had probably spent a pile of money on the project.

In the county assessor’s office at the county courthouse, he located the file for the Bluewater Canyon Ranch. Since the date of purchase, Norvell’s property had increased in taxable value by over five million dollars. The old ranch headquarters had been torn down and replaced by a ten-thousand-square-foot hacienda, along with six new guest houses of three thousand square feet each, horse stables, barns, a swimming pool with a cabana and hot tubs, garages, a caretaker’s cottage, a bunkhouse, and something called a meditation center, which included a small movie theater.

Clayton went looking for the deputy county assessor, Marvin Rickland, and bumped into him in the hallway.

“Have you got a minute to tell me about the Bluewater Canyon Ranch?” he asked.

Rickland nodded. “What a place. It’s amazing what money can buy. The senator sure hasn’t spared any expense. I bet the landscaping alone set him back a half million or more.”

“What does he use it for?”

“Right now, just for friends, family, business associates, clients, and his political pals. He caters to a lot of rich people who are looking to buy property through his real estate company and who want anonymity while they’re here. The last time I talked to him he said eventually it was going to be a resort-type dude ranch. Why he doesn’t open it up right now beats me.”

“You’ve done all the property assessments,” Clayton said. “Describe it to me.”

“It’s really spread out,” Rickland replied. “Each guest house is at least a mile from the main residence and very private. The style is Santa Fe adobe, with portals, patios, courtyards and all those Southwest touches like corner fireplaces and beamed ceilings. Around the headquarters you’ve got the meditation center, the swimming pool, staff housing, and a horse barn and stables about a quarter mile away. He’s even got an airstrip on the property, along with all-weather gravel roads, and a grader to keep them in good repair.”

“Do you have any trouble getting in?”

Rickland laughed. “I was just talking to Ray Kelsey about that the other day. He’s the general construction inspector for the state, who works out of Ruidoso. He was telling me the senator has submitted plans to build a sweat lodge and a pond along a creek bed and put in a Japanese-style garden. We were laughing about how we always have to call ahead and make an appointment to get on the property. It’s completely fenced—the whole twenty thousand acres—and he has it patrolled regularly. Everybody who works there has to sign a confidentiality agreement not to talk about the guests or the ranch. Those rich people really like their privacy.”

Clayton asked a few more questions and learned that an electronic gate with a speaker box controlled access to the ranch road, and the headquarters were about five miles beyond the gate. There were no neighbors within a ten-mile radius, and Rickland dealt with Norvell’s live-in manager when he needed to make a tax assessment inspection. Rickland had never seen any of Norvell’s friends or clients during his visits, but there were usually cars parked at the guest houses and a plane or two on the landing strip.

Clayton thanked Rickland and went looking for the sheriff, who was due back in the office. His secretary told him Hewitt was running late and wouldn’t be in until around two. He went to his hallway desk and started writing out his chronological report so he could have it ready when the sheriff arrived.

 

Until the Indian cop arrived at the county courthouse, Fidel was bored and restless. He’d left his motel room early, thinking it would be maybe an hour before the cop showed at work, and he’d wound up waiting almost all morning. Fidel didn’t know why Rojas wanted him watched, but it would be fun to follow the cop around for a while, sneaky like. Of course, it would be way more cool to kill him.

He wondered why Rojas was worried about Istee. Did it have something to do with the hit at Casey’s Cozy Cabins? That had been a bitching cool kill, and taking out Staggs had also been kick-ass. He’d made Staggs beg before blowing him away. The old man pissed in his pants and cried like a baby.

The thirty grand Fidel had taken off Staggs’s body made it his most profitable hit yet, better than the Ulibarri job. He bet a cop would go for even more. Fidel smiled at the possibility.

Time passed and Fidel started getting bored again. Too bad Debbie Shea wasn’t with him. It would be a kick to have her go down on him, parked fifty feet outside of the sheriff’s office.