Michael McGarity - Serpent Gate

He swung the car out of traffic, parked at a small diner, and went in for a cup of coffee. He had some heavy thinking to do. neil ordway had left no forwarding address with the Mountainair town clerk, and there was nothing in his police officer certification file that yielded information on his current whereabouts. Kerney phoned the agency that administered the police pension fund and got lucky; Ordway had made a request to withdraw his retirement contributions. He had asked that the check be mailed to a street address in the town of Bemalillo, just north of Albuquerque.

Kerney stopped by Andy's office and found it empty.

He decided not to wait for Andy to return from the governor's office before taking off. It shouldn't take more than an hour or two to round up Ordway.

He paid a quick visit to Joe Valdez, who had his head buried in a stack of papers. Kerney cleared his throat and Valdez looked up. He had a gleam in his eye and a smile on his face.

"I was going to call you in a few minutes. Chief."

"To tell me what?"

"Do you want the technical or the bonehead explanation?"

"Keep it simple, Joe. I have trouble balancing my checkbook."

"It's a round-robin scam. Bucky's companies are nothing but conduits for De Leon money. He pumps it through Tortuga, which lends cash to Matador, Magia, or some other front, and then it's funneled into projects like Rancho Caballo. Everything comes back to Tortuga nice and clean."

"Does it all come back as cash?"

"No way," Joe said.

"Shopping malls, raw land, apartments, subdivisions, commercial and industrial developments-take your pick. De Leon has too much cash; his quandary is finding ways to convert the money that keeps pouring in."

"How did you get to it so quickly?"

"It's a high-tech world. Chief. Even drug lords use computers nowadays. Bucky's computer was linked to the one at Tortuga International. When our computer specialist found the link, I asked him to search the data fields in the Tortuga computer system. It's been a damn gold mine."

"Have you seized the Tortuga computers and any hard-copy corporate records?"

Joe looked at his watch.

"Agents from the Las Cruces office should be at Tortuga right now. It took a while to do the paperwork and get a court order signed."

"Have you been here all night?"

"Yeah. Again."

"Have you got any steam left?"

"I'm good for a few more hours."

"Where do we stand with Sherman Cobb and Roger Springer?"

"Both Bucky and De Leon kept track of their payments to Rancho Caballo by computer. Plus, I've got Springer and Cobb signing off on loan applications, countersigning checks, authorizing payments, approving contracts, and accelerating repayments. Put the hard-copy evidence together with Watson's confession and we've got more than enough probable cause."

"Arrest Cobb and Springer," Kerney said.

"Take a couple of agents with you."

"Now, won't that be fun," Joe said with a grin. *** andy pulled into his parking space just as Joe Valdez and two other agents hurried out the door. Valdez spotted Andy's car and walked to it. Andy opened the window and waited.

"Chief, I left a note on your desk."

"What does it say?"

"Chief Kerney went down to Bernalillo. You can reach him by radio if needed."

"Where arc you off to?"

"To arrest Springer and Cobb."

"Tell me what you've got," Andy said.

Valdez ran down the facts while the two agents waited inside their units.

After hearing Joe out, and asking a few questions, Andy smiled. Over coffee at the diner, he'd decided to have Cobb and Springer picked up.

Kerney had beaten him to it.

"Chief?" Valdez said.

Andy laughed and shook his head.

"Do it."

He watched Valdez and the agents drive off, and the tight feeling in his gut started to evaporate.

In his office, he started making calls to the State Department, FBI, the Department of Justice, Customs, and the CIA. He talked to people he knew, several of whom owed him favors. He wanted to blow a bigger hole in De Leon operation, if possible. He hung up with promises from the feds to move quickly. De Leon was known throughout the criminal justice and intelligence systems, and every agency was eager to cooperate.

He had his secretary fax key documents to federal officials in Washington, Virginia, Albuquerque, and El Paso, and told his public affairs officer to set up a press conference.

To stay on the job in the face of his insubordination, Andy would have to play politics. Once word of his disloyalty reached the Roundhouse, Springer's people would come after him, and he wasn't about to make it easy for the governor to fire him. oncb a farming settlement along the banks of the Rio Grande, the town of Bemalillo was somewhat protected from the suburban sprawl of Albuquerque by an Indian pueblo that buffered the two cities. But the cushion of open land that cut a swath east from the river to the mountains couldn't hold back the development that filled the west mesa.

A gently rising plateau with eroded cones of extinct volcanoes, sandy arroyos, black lava rock, and bunch grass the mesa had been transformed into a series of bedroom communities that filled the skyline.

It vanished from sight when Kerney got off the interstate and dipped into the shallow river valley that sheltered the town. He drove the four-lane main street to city hall, where he stopped and asked for directions.

Ordway lived one block off the main drag in an old two-story adobe farmhouse that had been carved into small apartments. Under the porch were two entry doors, and on either side of the building staircases led to second-story living units. There were lace curtains in the front window of a first-floor apartment, along with a picture of the Virgin Mary that had been taped to a glass pane. The name Abeyta was stenciled on the mailbox next to the door.

Kerney knocked on the door and a heavyset, elderly Hispanic woman wearing a drab gray dress opened it partway.

"Seftora Abeyta," Kerney said, speaking in Spanish.

"I hope I am not disturbing you." In the background he heard the loud chatter of a television talk show.

"Not at all, but I have no vacancies," Mrs. Abeyta replied in English.

"All my apartments are rented."

"I'm looking for a friend of mine," he explained.

"NeilOrdway."

"Oh yes, he just moved in, but he is not here now."

"Do you know how I can reach him?"

"He said that he had a job working for a carpet installer."

"Do you know which one?"

Mrs. Abeyta shook her head.

"No, but I think he might be working in Rio Rancho, putting carpets in all those new houses they are building up there."

"He told you that?"

"Yes, when he rented the apartment."

"Gratias, selfora."

"You're welcome, senor."

Kerney stopped at a cafe on the main street, and used a pay phone and directory to whittle down an interminable number of carpet installers until he located Ordway's new employer. Mrs. Abeyta had heard Ordway correctly, the company was doing subcontract installations for a builder in the Rio Rancho area. Kerney got the address where Ordway was working.

He left Bemalillo and drove up the mesa. The view east toward the mountains showed a sweep of pale hills that climbed from the bosque.

The Rio Grande ran brown and languid around fingerlike sandbars Kerney glimpsed through the breaks in the thick cottonwood stands. But the drive into Rio Rancho took him into a different world altogether. High privacy walls bordered the wide thoroughfare, masking all but the second story of houses squeezed together on tiny lots. At major intersections, strip malls, convenience stores, and gas stations abounded. The stark, beautiful New Mexico landscape had been transformed into a place no different from the oozing Los Angeles megalopolis.