Nothing But Trouble

Chapter Four

Kerney arrived in the town of Playas ahead of schedule and used his spare time to take a look around. What he saw amazed him. Although he knew Playas was a virtually abandoned, modern company town, it was quite another matter to see it.

The two-lane road into town was paved, and just on the outskirts were two churches, baseball fields, a swimming pool, and a recreation center. The road looped around a grassy knoll dotted with trees that formed the gateway to the town, where a single-story apartment building with a covered portal faced the parklike setting.

Beyond the town a sweep of low hills rose up, rock strewn, barren, and steeply sloped. Backed against them the town looked out at a dry, glistening white lakebed in a broad valley that stretched to the Animas Mountains. The word for beaches in Spanish was playas, and the dry lakebed looked exactly like a pristine sandy shore without any water.

Playas was a bit of suburbia transplanted in the middle of the desert. A raven flew overhead and Kerney thought that from a bird’s-eye view, with its paved streets, Santa Fe-style houses, and modern commercial buildings, it could have passed for a bedroom community outside any major southwestern city. At ground level things didn’t look so normal. On street after street abandoned, weather-beaten houses with cracked stucco, warped garage doors, faded trim, and blank windows looked out on weed-infested front yards peppered with dead trees and shrubs.

A few occupied houses stood out here and there with grassy lawns and shade trees in full green color. Cars were parked in driveways, front doors were cluttered with children’s toys and bikes, and there were curtains in the windows. On a street at the top of a small rise the occupied houses were larger, lawns bigger, shade trees more numerous, and the views of the valley spectacular. Kerney figured it to be the neighborhood where the mining company honchos had once lived.

The commercial area of town contained buildings that had once served as a mercantile store, medical clinic, post office, bank, community center, and an indoor recreation complex. As a cop Kerney could see the endless possibilities for using Playas as an antiterrorism training center. It would serve perfectly for any number of training scenarios, such as massive house-to-house searches, SWAT-team helicopter incursions, bomb-squad disposal operations, hostage-negotiation situations, sniper training, and any number of high-risk police, fire, or medical emergencies. In many ways the town reminded him of a much larger version of Hogan’s Alley, a self-contained, fully functional village on the grounds of the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia, which was used to train agents in crime-scene scenarios.

He made a mental note to talk to his training lieutenant about getting sworn personnel enrolled in the program once it was fully operational. He stopped at a sleek, stepped-back stuccoed structure with multiple entrances and a flat roof, where several semitrailers were parked. A group of men were unloading construction materials. On the lawn in front of the building two workers were planting a large carved wooden sign that read:

TOWN OF COUNCIL ROCK MUNICIPAL OFFICES

Council Rock was the name of the fictional town in the screenplay, which meant that Playas was already being dressed up as a movie set.

Kerney approached the men who were installing the sign and asked where the production team was meeting. One of the men pointed across the way to the community center, which Kerney found to be locked. He looked through the glass doors. Two long folding tables sat pushed together in the middle of the hall, surrounded by chairs. There were plastic coffee cups, water bottles, soda cans, and documents on the table, but no one inside.

He hung around and watched a crew of men use portable scaffolding to attach new signs to the stepped-back building. Over the next twenty minutes they transformed three doorways into entrances to the Council Rock mayor’s office, municipal court, and police headquarters.

Four black full-size SUVs pulled up to the curb in front of the community center. A dozen people piled out of the vehicles and walked quickly to the community meeting hall entrance. Kerney spotted Johnny Jordan in the middle of the pack, talking animatedly to a tall man carrying a thick three-ring binder and wearing chinos, athletic shoes, and a brand-new straw cowboy hat perched on the back of his head. He tagged along and got close enough to hear the two men exchange heated words about some proposed script changes.

Inside the community center the debate continued as the group took their seats around the tables. Unobtrusively, Kerney stood by the door and watched.

“I want that damn copper smelter in the film as the location for the climax of the chase scene,” the tall man in the new cowboy hat said.

“The climax occurs at the rodeo arena,” Johnny said, looking agitated. “We agreed on that when we finalized the script.”

“We can change the damn script,” the tall man said, as he flipped through the pages of the binder. “For Chrissake, that’s what writers are for. I want the copper smelter for the climax. All that industrial stuff sitting in the middle of a desert is visually stunning. Plus, it makes a great juxtaposition between the cowboy culture and modern society.”

“The brawl at the rodeo arena is the climax,” Johnny shot back.

The tall man stared Johnny down. “Here’s the way I see it: We keep the script as it is right through the scene where the cops scatter the cattle with police helicopters and the rancher hightails it off BLM land through the mountain pass. But instead of having the cops bust them later in the day at the ranch rodeo, we keep the pursuit going to the smelter, where the cops find the cowboys gathering up the strays. We’ll have cowboys on horseback chasing cows in and out of the buildings, cops chasing cowboys on foot and with squad cars, and a brawl that ends in a standoff when the rancher decides to call it quits before anyone gets seriously hurt.”

The tall man turned to a man with glasses on his immediate left, who was studying papers on a clipboard. “Costwise, can we do this?”

“If we drop the rodeo scenes completely, we can.”

“I’ve got world-class champions signed on to this film, expecting to showcase their talents,” Johnny said.

“Maybe they still can,” Kerney said.

All eyes turned toward Kerney.

“Who are you?” the tall man asked.

“Kevin Kerney. I’m one of your technical advisors.”

“Kerney’s here for the cop stuff,” Johnny said, looking flustered. “Not rodeoing.”

“Let Chief Kerney talk,” the tall man said, waving Kerney toward an empty chair. “I’m Malcolm Usher, the director.”

Kerney sat at the table and nodded a hello to all before turning his attention to Usher. “It seems to me, you can show off their rodeo talents through some good old-fashioned cowboying. They can rope cows and cops, do some bulldogging and bronc riding, and cut out stock so that it’s a combined rodeo, brawl, and police bust.”

All the people at the table, including Johnny, waited for Usher’s reaction.

Usher slapped the table with his hand and stood. “I love it. It’s exactly what I had in mind.” He patted the man with the glasses on the shoulder. “Get our stunt coordinator started working out the details. I want cows climbing over squad cars, knocking cops over, barreling through buildings, that kind of stuff. I’m thinking it will be a late-afternoon, early-evening shoot, just like we planned for the rodeo scenes. Probably two days. Schedule us to go back to the smelter tomorrow before sundown.”

The man with the eyeglasses wrote down Usher’s instructions on the clipboard. “We’ll have to come to some agreement to lease the premises. But with the smelter shut down, I doubt the cost will be exorbitant.”

“Good,” Usher said as he closed his three-ring binder and looked at Johnny. “Let’s you and I get together before dinner and sketch out the new scenes for the writers.”

Glumly, Johnny nodded.

“That’s it,” Usher said. “Everybody back here at four a.m. for the tech scout. Charlie will give you your housing assignments, and our schedule for the next two days. For now, we’ll all be crashing in the apartment building.”

Usher left. Charlie, who turned out to be the man wearing the eyeglasses, read off the housing assignments, which had Kerney bunking with Johnny. Charlie told the group that meals would be served by the caterer in the mercantile building, and the tech scout locations would be passed out after dinner.

As the meeting broke up, Johnny introduced Kerney to the people in attendance. The group included the unit production manager, set decorator, transportation captain, construction coordinator, cinematographer, the assistant director, several other lighting specialists, and Charlie Zwick, the producer.

Zwick shook Kerney’s hand and thanked him for his good idea.

“Yeah, thanks a lot,” Johnny said sarcastically, after Zwick left the building.

“Come on, Johnny,” Kerney said. “It was apparent that the director had already made up his mind to change the ending before I spoke up.”

“You don’t get it,” Johnny snapped. “I’m trying to build public interest in rodeoing with this movie. Get people excited about the sport, make it a major ticket draw. Now that’s not going to happen. Instead, film-goers are just gonna see what they think are a bunch of neat horseback and cowboy stunts as part of a brawl.”

Kerney pushed open the door and stepped outside. “I wasn’t trying to thwart you.”

Johnny took the cell phone off his belt and flipped it open. “It sure felt that way. I’ve got some phone calls to make. I’ll see you later.” Johnny hurried across the parking lot with the cell phone planted in his ear.

Kerney decided to let Johnny chill out before going to the apartment. He didn’t want to face a contentious evening with Johnny ragging on him about not getting his way. It was a good two hours before dinner. He decided to drive to the smelter to take a look at the place that had inspired Malcolm Usher to change the script. Besides, he wanted to see the Star of the North that Officer Sapian had told him about.

The paved road from Playas to the copper smelter paralleled a railroad spur that connected with the main trunk line east of Lordsburg, a windblown desert town on Interstate 10 that served as the seat of government for Hidalgo County.

The valley widened a bit as Kerney headed south, deep into the Bootheel. To the west the Animas Mountains cut a broad, foreboding swath against the sky. To the east the Little Hatchet Mountains, drenched in afternoon sunlight, were buff gold at the peaks.

Farther southeast the Big Hatchet Mountains rose up, pointing the way to Mexico and the Alamo Hueco Mountains at the border, where, according to what Kerney had read, once a year in the spring buffalo came up from the Chihuahua Desert to forage. He thought it would be great to see that.

Under the greasewood and mesquite the tall valley grass was a thick pelt that signaled summer rains had arrived at exactly the right time. Otherwise the grass would be yellow and stunted, the sandy soil dried out and cracked.

The big sky, the mountains, the desert so deceptively serene, the scarcity of anything man-made in the valley, pleased Kerney and gave him hope that maybe ranching could hold on and survive for a few more generations.

Nine miles south of Playas all those thoughts passed from Kerney’s mind. The smelter sat on the east side of the valley between two dry lakebeds with the Little Hatchets looming over the complex, dwarfing the towering smokestack. The gate was open, and Kerney parked in front of the administration building, where a sign directed him to a side entrance.

Inside, he found fully equipped offices, conference rooms, and a reception area devoid of people except for a lanky, middle-aged man dressed in a Western shirt, jeans, and boots, who was filling out paperwork at a counter in front of an enlarged, framed photograph of the smelter.

“Can I help you?” the man said.

“I’m with the film company,” Kerney told him, extending his hand. “Name’s Kevin Kerney.”

“Ira Dobson,” the man replied, shaking Kerney’s hand. “I had a whole slew of you movie folks through here a couple hours ago.”

“I missed the tour,” Kerney replied.

“You didn’t miss much,” Dobson replied with a laugh. “About all I showed them was where we used to unload the copper concentrate, the building that houses the flash furnace, and the acid plant.”

“Acid plant?” Kerney asked.

Dobson nodded. “Yep. We used to produce more sulfuric acid than copper. Time was, we shipped twenty-five tank cars of acid and up to forty semitruck loads a day. Most of it went to make fertilizer.”

“Where did you get the water to run the acid operation?” Kerney asked.

Dobson studied Kerney more carefully. “Sounds like you know something about the process.”

Kerney shook his head. “Not really. But I do know it takes water to make sulfuric acid.”

“Lots of water,” Dobson agreed. “We used two hundred fifty thousand gallons a day when the plant was running, just on acid production alone. At peak capacity our wells can produce four million gallons a day.”

“That’s a hell of a lot of water to pump out of the ground.”

Dobson nodded. “The company owns or controls almost a half-million acres of land in the Bootheel, plus about seven thousand acre-feet of annual water rights. The day could come when the water may be worth more than the land.”

“Do you run the show here?” Kerney asked.

Dobson chuckled. “Nope, I run the water system for the smelter and the town site. We’ve got wells spread up and down the valley. Some are used by ranchers who lease grazing rights from the company, some are for wildlife habitat. In the more remote areas we use solar power to pump the wells.”

“The job must keep you jumping,” Kerney said.

Dobson snorted. “At least I’ve got a job, for now. But once they tear this smelter down, I’ll be looking for work.”

“Is that going to happen anytime soon?” Kerney asked.

Dobson shrugged. “That depends. We’ve got some groundwater contamination issues to deal with, along with some other environmental cleanup problems. The lawyers are fighting it out with the federal and state regulators.”

“Do you live in Playas?” Kerney asked.

“I sure do. Me and about fifty-some other folks, give or take a few. The deal is that when the town got sold to become an antiterrorism training center, the residents could stay. Some have been hired on as maintenance and upkeep personnel.”

“Mind if I take a look around the smelter?” Kerney asked.

“Go ahead,” Dobson said. “But keep out of those areas posted for employees only. That’s most of the plant. But you can walk or drive around the perimeter, if the gates are unlocked. Watch out for rattlesnakes.”

He opened a counter drawer and handed Kerney a packet of general information about the smelter. “There’s some interesting stuff in there about the valley and the company.”

Kerney thanked Dobson for his time and went outside. High above him the warning beacon on top of the smokestack flashed brightly in the afternoon sunlight. At nightfall, if Officer Flavio Sapian was right, the Star of the North would guide another group of illegal immigrants across the border. Kerney wondered how many Border Patrol officers were on station, ready to pounce on the coyotes who’d be hauling illegal human cargo into the States. The Border Patrol was stretched tight from lack of funding, and the increase promised after 9/11 had never fully materialized.

Behind the administration building, at the end of a large, virtually empty parking lot, was the main employee entrance to the smelter, festooned with fading painted signs that promoted safety and noted 698 consecutive accident-free days at the plant. Parked near the entrance were several vehicles, including a panel van that looked like the one that had passed Kerney earlier in the day just before he found the dying Mexican lying on the pavement.

He couldn’t be sure if it was the same vehicle, but it was a close enough match to make Kerney pull out Flavio Sapian’s business card and call him on his cell phone.

“Have you been able to ID the victim?” Kerney asked, when Sapian answered.

“Negative, Chief. He had no papers on him at all. The body’s en route to Albuquerque for an autopsy. Maybe his prints will ID him, but I doubt it.”

“I’m down at the copper smelter south of Playas, looking at a vehicle that’s similar to the one that passed me on the highway,” Kerney said. “Same color, same make. You want the license plate number?”

“You bet I do. Read it off.”

Kerney gave him the info and said, “Let me know if anything comes of it.”

“Ten-four.”

Sapian disconnected and Kerney continued his walk. He didn’t know the first thing about copper smelting, but the handout Dobson had provided told him a lot. The flash furnace Dobson had mentioned once produced eight hundred tons of cast copper daily. In its heyday the smelter had operated around the clock, processing two thousand tons of copper concentrate every twenty-four hours.

Kerney eyed the buildings, many of them two or three stories tall. Several were connected by what looked like covered chutes or conveyers. To the north the rail spur ran to what appeared to be a loading dock abutting a storage silo. To the south a series of large steel storage tanks defined an area that Kerney took to be the place where sulfuric acid had been produced. Near the tall smokestack in the center of the complex stood another silo and the largest structure on the grounds, which Kerney figured held the furnace used to mold the copper castings.

He could see why Malcolm Usher, the director of the film, would want to use the smelter in the movie. The stark, utilitarian industrial complex rose out of the desert on a grand scale, in sharp contrast to the raw, knuckled mountains, the soapweed yucca flats, and the ruddy white soil of the dry lakebed, creating a visually stunning effect.

Back at the employee entrance the panel truck was gone and the administration building was locked. Near his truck a young diamondback rattlesnake slithered slowly across the pavement, soaking up the heat of the day, and disappeared under a boulder in a landscaped bed of crushed red rock that fronted the entrance to the building.

In late summer or early fall female diamondbacks laid their eggs, giving birth to upwards of two dozen young. As a precaution Kerney checked around his truck carefully before climbing on board and driving away.

Over twenty years ago Malcolm Usher had started his career directing country music videos, gradually working his way up the food chain. After a successful stint directing episodes for a number of sitcoms, he’d moved on to made-for-television movies, one of which had been nominated for an Emmy.

Usher had hoped the Emmy nomination would vault him into a shot at directing a feature film, and after waiting for two years he’d finally gotten the call. With this new movie Usher could advance his career. But after reading the script he’d realized the story line was just a little shy of the necessary ingredients for a successful feature film. He was determined to make it better.

In his apartment he sat at the dining table and looked at the digital photographs his cinematographer had taken of the smelter. The best location for the new scenes was next to the delivery dock by the rail spur, where ore cars and some heavy equipment were parked at the siding. From that vantage point the smelter and smokestack would form a perfect backdrop against the mountains.

Besides offering excellent visuals, the site provided easy access, which minimized the logistics of moving the equipment, livestock, and cast and crew to the location.

He thought about Alfred Hitchcock’s famous crack that actors should be treated like cattle, and snickered. Hitchcock had never made a Western, or he would have had his chance.

Pleased with his decision, Usher began mapping out the scenes. He was deeply engrossed in the process when Johnny Jordan knocked at the open door and entered, looking piqued.

“I don’t like this change you’re proposing, Malcolm,” he said.

Usher glanced at his wristwatch. “You took your time getting here.”

Johnny turned a chair around and straddled it. “And I’ve been talking to some people who don’t like it either.”

“Let me guess,” Usher said. “Could that be your rodeo stars?”

Johnny nodded. “They hired on to do a cattle drive and a rodeo, not to be part of some dumb melee at the damn copper smelter.”

Usher removed his reading glasses. “No, they signed on as actors, which means they do what the director tells them to do. If they don’t like it, I’ve got stuntmen who can do the job just as well for a lot less money. In fact, Corry McKowen, my stunt coordinator, rode the pro circuit for five years. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind getting a costarring credit on his resume.”

“Corry was a lightweight on the circuit.”

“Maybe so, but he’s no lightweight as a stuntman. Tell me now if you want to pull your cowboys off the film. Believe me, it’s no big deal to replace actors who walk before shooting starts.”

“I didn’t say that,” Johnny said, his brow creased with worry.

Usher held back a smile. Jordan might know a lot about rodeoing, but he didn’t know squat about moviemaking. “Then work with me, Johnny. This could be the best damn Western fight scene in a film since John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara brawled with the homesteaders in McLintock! over forty years ago.”

“That was a good movie,” Johnny said grudgingly.

“Let’s write the scenes together so that your boys get to show off their stuff in front of the cameras,” Usher said.

Johnny nodded and edged his chair close to the table.

The apartment Kerney was to share with Johnny had two small bedrooms separated by a bath, a galley kitchen with an adjacent dining nook, and a living room furnished with a couch, one easy chair, a couple of end tables with lamps, and a wall-mounted television set. The groundskeeper who had been watering the lawn when Kerney arrived had told him the building had originally been used to provide temporary housing for visiting company employees and executives from the home office.

Johnny wasn’t around, so Kerney dumped his travel bag in one of the bedrooms and went to the mercantile store to grab some dinner. A large motor home parked by the entrance had a sign painted on it that read:

WESTERN SCENE CATERERS PURVEYORS OF FINE FOOD TO THE FILM INDUSTRY

Inside the store, rows of cafeteria tables and chairs had been set up, and a buffet meal was available at a serving table filled with warming trays of food, drink urns, dinnerware, and utensils. Kerney chose the vegetarian entree and joined two men at one of the tables, who introduced themselves as Buzzy and Gus.

In their early fifties, both men had an easy style about them that made Kerney feel comfortable and welcome. Over dinner he learned a good bit about the complexities of photographing a motion picture.

Gus, the key grip, explained that his job was to set up diffusion screens and large shades to modify light for the cameras, operate camera dollies and cranes, and mount cameras on vehicles and airplanes. Buzzy, the gaffer, supervised the lighting for each scene and ran the crew responsible for setting up the lamps and generating the power.

Kerney asked them if Usher’s decision to change the ending of the screenplay was common practice.

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Gus said with chuckle. “Any good director puts his own stamp on a film. There will be dialogue rewrites, camera-angle changes, scenes that get dropped, altered, or added-the list goes on and on.”

“We’ll have most of it sorted out at a final production meeting once we’ve visited all the locations,” Buzzy said. “That’s when we’ll know basically what stays and what goes.”

“Don’t the producers have a say?” Kerney asked.

“Not creatively,” Gus replied. “Charlie Zwick will have his hands full dealing with production delays, weather changes, sick or ill-tempered actors, continuity problems, staying within the budget-you name it.”

“Fortunately, Charlie and Malcolm have worked together before,” Buzzy said, “so it should go smoothly.”

After dinner with Gus and Buzzy, Kerney took a stroll through the empty, silent streets of Playas, past rows of dark, vacant houses. As daylight faded, streetlights in the dormant town flickered on, casting eerie shadows through an occasional dead tree. It felt almost otherworldly, as though some invisible catastrophe had annihilated the population of the town, leaving behind the houses as a mute testimony to the disaster.

He turned the corner on a residential street near a shuttered building that had once served as the town library, and caught sight of a roadrunner scooting around the rear end of a Motor Transportation Division patrol car parked in front of an occupied house.

Part of the New Mexico Department of Public Safety, the MTD primarily enforced federal and state safety statutes of commercial motor vehicles, including hazardous-material and drug-interdiction inspections. Although its officers had full police powers, most of the agency’s resources were allocated to traffic safety, commercial vehicle over-the-road compliance, and drug trafficking.

Farther on Kerney passed another occupied house with a Hidalgo County sheriff’s squad car parked outside. He was on the tail end of his walk, heading down the hill in the direction of the town center, when his cell phone rang.

“I’ve got information on that license plate,” Flavio Sapian said after Kerney answered. “The vehicle is registered to Jerome Mendoza.”

“Tell me about Mr. Mendoza,” Kerney said.

“It’s interesting stuff. Mendoza is an MTD officer assigned to the Lordsburg Port of Entry. Single, age twenty-eight, he’s got a home address listed in Playas.”

“I just passed by his house,” Kerney said. “What’s his connection to the smelter?”

“Unknown. I’m going to call his supervisor after we hang up.”

“I suggest you hold off on that,” Kerney said. “If Mendoza is involved in any wrongdoing, you’d be giving him a heads-up.”

“Why wait?” Sapian asked. “As it stands, I have no evidence that proves a crime was committed, nor can I actually put Mendoza at the scene of the accident.”

“I understand that,” Kerney said. “But for now you might want to treat him as a person of interest, until you have a few more facts.”

“Such as?”

“The victim’s identity, for starters,” Kerney said. “What if it turns up that Mendoza knew the victim? You’d look pretty foolish if you didn’t have that information before approaching him. When will you know something?”

“Tomorrow,” Sapian replied.

“That’s soon enough,” Kerney said. “If he’s clean, it leaves his reputation intact, and if he’s dirty, well, that’s a whole different matter.”

“I hear you, Chief,” Sapian said. “Talk to you tomorrow.”

Back at the apartment Johnny was nowhere to be found. Grateful for the solitude, Kerney read several chapters in the first volume of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s planned autobiographical trilogy before rolling into bed. He wondered what kind of story Marquez might fashion about the town of Playas. Surely it would be filled myth and magic, enriched with intrigue and imagined dreams.

He was almost asleep when he heard someone pounding on the apartment door. Thinking it was Johnny, Kerney opened up, and two men in suits flashed U.S. Customs agent shields and invited themselves inside.

“You’re Kevin Kerney, right?” an agent with a hook nose asked as he closed the door behind him. He was fortyish, dark skinned, and spoke with a slight Spanish accent.

Kerney nodded. The man’s partner, a blond-headed, blue-eyed, baby-faced man, made a quick inspection of the apartment and returned to the living room.

“He’s alone,” the man said.

Barefoot, wearing only shorts and a T-shirt, Kerney held up his hand to stop any further questioning. “If you know my name, you probably also know I’m a cop. Let me put some clothes on, and then we can talk.”

Hook Nose nodded and said, “We’ll watch, if you don’t mind.”

“Come along,” Kerney said, “if that kind of thing turns you on.”

In the bedroom Kerney fished his badge case and police credentials out of the pocket of his jeans and tossed them to Hook Nose before dressing. He looked them over as Kerney pulled on jeans and a shirt. Back in the living room Kerney asked to see some identification. Hook Nose was Supervising Special Agent Domingo Fidel. His partner was Special Agent Ray Bratton.

“Okay,” Kerney said. “Tell me what this is all about.”

“The man you found on Highway Eighty-one was an undercover officer,” Fidel said, “who’d spent the last six months infiltrating an illegal-immigrant smuggling ring operating in this area. He was on his first solo run across the border from Mexico with ten aliens who’d paid two thousand dollars each to be brought across.”

“He looked like a Mexican teenager to me,” Kerney said. “Was he a fresh young recruit right out of your academy?” Many officers were assigned to undercover duty immediately after completing their training in order to reduce the risk of having their cover blown.

“Exactly,” Fidel said. “He was supposed to bring his cargo up to a remote ranch road west of Antelope Wells and then walk them to a place where a vehicle would be waiting for him with instructions on his final destination. We couldn’t stake it out because he didn’t get the route information until just before he left.”

“He’d made six previous runs,” Bratton said, “with the coyote who heads up the operation. Each time the crossing took place at a different location.”

“On those earlier runs he was sent back to Mexico after the crossings,” Fidel added, “while the coyote finished the transport alone.”

“So you don’t know the final destination,” Kerney said.

Fidel shook his head. “Or who the coyote is working with on this side of the border.”

“We think they’re using someplace in the Bootheel as a holding area for the illegals,” Bratton said, “before moving them on to Tucson, Phoenix, and L.A.”

“Playas?” Kerney asked.

“No way,” Fidel said. “We’ve had people from Homeland Security through this town a dozen times, posing as part of the team that put together the purchase agreement to buy it for use as an antiterrorist training center. The people who live here are clean as a whistle.”

“What kind of vehicle would be used to move the human cargo on this side of the border?” Kerney asked.

Bratton sank down on the couch and leaned forward. “It was always changed on each run. That’s why what you saw could be important.”

“You obviously know what I saw,” Kerney said, “or you wouldn’t be here.”

“But where you saw the vehicle the second time could be important,” Fidel said.

“The panel van at the smelter may or may not be the same vehicle,” Kerney replied.

“But it was similar enough to catch your interest,” Bratton said, “and it’s owned by a state Motor Transportation officer, who just happens to moonlight on his days off as a security guard at the smelter.”

“You did a background check on Mendoza?” Kerney inquired.

“On everybody who lives in Playas,” Fidel replied. “All fifty-six of them. Mendoza enlisted in the army at eighteen and served as a truck driver. After discharge he got a job as a long-haul driver for an outfit in El Paso. Three years ago he joined the Motor Transportation Division as a recruit and went through the New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy. He was assigned to Lordsburg upon graduation and has been there ever since.”

“Do you think he’s your man?” Kerney asked.

Fidel eased himself down on the arm of the couch. “Unknown, but consider this: The smelter is a sprawling, huge plant, off limits to outsiders. It’s run by a skeleton crew of ten employees who are just there to basically maintain it and deal with environmental cleanup issues. Can you think of a better place to warehouse illegals? There must be a dozen places in that smelter where you could hide people for a short time with no one the wiser.”

“That makes sense,” Kerney said, “but back up for a minute. Your undercover officer saw six different vehicles on his runs with the coyote. Didn’t he get license-plate and vehicle information to you?”

“The plates were stolen from trucks in the States,” Bratton replied, “and the vehicles were abandoned in Phoenix and L.A. All of them had been originally registered in Mexico under fictitious company names.”

“Okay,” Kerney said. “Now that I know all this, tell me why you’re really here.”

“Tomorrow Officer Sapian will call and tell you the body couldn’t be identified. Because there is no probable cause that a crime has been committed, we’d like you to suggest that he close the case as an accidental death.”

“That’s easy enough to do,” Kerney said. “What else?”

“Bratton here is going to join the film crew as an apprentice employee vetted by a theatrical stage employees’ union. He’ll be a gofer for the set decorator, or something like that. You’ll be his contact. What he tells you, you’ll pass on to me.”

“What purpose does putting Bratton undercover serve?”

“We’re after a network here, Kerney,” Fidel answered. “One that has been way too successful at not getting caught. The coyote on the Mexican side is a former corrupt cop. Mendoza is a cop. There may be other officers involved that we don’t know about. Maybe some Border Patrol officers are on the pad, looking the other way. Or some of the good citizens of Playas could be supplementing their incomes. I lost a nice young kid who was doing his job, and now it’s personal. Somebody blew his cover, and I want the son of a bitch who did it, and the other son of a bitch who killed him.”

“And Mendoza?” Kerney asked.

“He’s under surveillance twenty-four/seven starting now,” Bratton said, “as are some of our own people.”

Kerney walked to the door and opened it. “Did you roust me because you thought I might be a dirty cop involved in this scheme?”

“Think of it as a reality check,” Fidel replied.

“It’s your show.”

“You’ll do it?” Fidel asked, as he and Bratton stepped outside.

“Yeah, I’ll help,” Kerney said, “in spite of your bad manners.”

Johnny Jordan and Malcolm Usher didn’t finish working on the new scenes until after midnight. It was all good stuff, and Johnny had to admit to himself that the changes totally outdid the rodeo in terms of high-octane action. He watched as Usher sent the new material by e-mail to the screenwriter in California so some fresh dialogue could be worked up.

“I still think we could use the rodeo scenes,” Johnny said, when Usher closed the lid to his laptop. “Maybe in a slightly different way.”

“How so?” Usher asked, looking at Johnny over the rim of his reading glasses.

Johnny leaned back against the couch. “You’ve been talking about plot points all night long. How the film has to move the action along. So, I’ve been thinking about the opening scenes. Except for when the rancher chases the BLM officer and the sheriff’s deputies off the land, there’s not a lot of drama.”

“The tension builds nicely,” Usher retorted.

“Yeah, but where’s the impact? The rancher stands down the cops, who go off to get a court order to force him off the federal land. Meanwhile, the rancher’s daughter goes looking for her brother, who’s on the pro rodeo circuit, and doesn’t come back with him until the day before the cattle drive.”

“How in the hell does a rodeo fit into any of that?” Usher asked.

“We do a scene where the daughter finds her brother competing at a rodeo,” Johnny said. “Maybe he gets thrown and busted up at bit. He’s short of cash and down on his luck. So is his buddy.”

Usher raised an eyebrow. “You’re talking Steve McQueen in Junior Bonner.”

“Yeah, a great movie. Anyway, the brother and his buddy agree to help out, because they don’t have enough cash between them to pay their expenses and enter the next rodeo.”

“And the rancher has issues with his son,” Usher added, “because he never came back to take over the ranch.”

“Just like it’s in the script,” Johnny said. “Except now the son comes home because he’s broke, not because he wants to make amends with his old man.”

“We’d need a real rodeo grounds to film it.”

“There’s a nice one just over the state line in Duncan, Arizona, a little more than a hour’s drive from here.”

“It might work,” Usher said, “if we used tight shoots to film your boys, Tyler and Clint, saddle bronc riding, and edit in some crowd background noise and a booth announcer’s voice to set the scene. We could put the girl at the arena railing with your Hispanic cowboys, Maestas and Lovato, to establish her presence, and then shoot a dialogue scene with her talking to her brother next to a horse trailer.”

“Do you like the idea?” Johnny asked.

“Can we get the rodeo grounds?”

“For a song, guaranteed. It sits unused most of the year except for a short horse-racing season in the spring and a community rodeo in late summer.”

Usher pushed the laptop away and reached for a tablet. “Are you up to pulling an all-nighter?”

Johnny laughed. “Hell, besides rodeoing, that’s what I do best.”